Sorry, been so busy setting up things for Twitter and my other businesses. Hang in there with Gold and Precious Metals. With everything that is coming down, new regulations, audit of the Fed, and etc.; thing are getting tougher and tougher for those who are and have been manipulating the Gold and Silver Markets. They (the big 3) and others are trying to take advantage of this being a normally slow time in the Gold Markets and are trying to make the charts appear (from a technical basis), that the rally has ended. Please do not fall for this! Keep accumulating more shares of all the tiers of producers and explorers who are about to start production. If you are buying Bullion TAKE DELIVERY! I still predicting that we will see Gold at $1250 and Silver $25 by the end of this year. Hold On, Be Patient, Take Delivery, and use this Opportunity to continue accumulating. I will have a new tip either tomorrow or the weekend.

In the meantime you can follow me and the markets on Twitter. I Tweet quite often during the day at the following sites on Twitter below. I reciprocate all follows and friend requests. Here is what I have set up for you on Twitter, please follow all or at least the ones that interest you. I will be starting back to daily posts in the next few weeks. Here is my also a little about me and my latest profile on Seeking Alpha:

I am just a simple guy, I love Investing. Nothing better than making a trade and Winning. The Life of a trader is this Hours upon Hours of Boredom punctuated by moments of Sheer Elation or Sheer Terror! LOL!
I could bore you with how I have held every Series License from Stocks, Commodities, Bonds and Insurance at one time or another, how I have 25yrs. + trading experience. Or tell you tales of my greatness but bottom line, I love what I do and I love to share, learn from and teach other people. My definition of being successful is while you are climbing up the mountain of Success, you are also holding out your hands to those below, to help pull others up the mountain with you. I hope you enjoy my blog, Tweets, and that I am able to entertain, but at the same time help you. Enjoy and May God Bless You Richly and Abundantly!

Ever since the sentimentally unsustainable negative events of Q4, 2008, when gold simply exploded higher in ratio to over-played assets far and wide in a panicked rush for safety, the ancient monetary metal has been consolidating its relative gains. As noted at the time in NFTRH, this excessive reaction had to be worked off. Now, unfortunately for the unprepared and hopeful, it has been worked off. Forewarned is forearmed.

Dialing forward to today, we find a tired rally in nominal stock, commodity and low quality debt prices. We see a rising Gold-Silver ratio (GSR) and a US dollar not far above our ‘do or die’ support level of 78. See the free, albeit abbreviated issue of NFTRH(.pdf) for the monthly view of USD.

NFTRH held and added gold miners strongly throughout the process of gold’s impulsive rise in ratio to the things that are positively correlated to economies and rising human spirits. This, even as nominal gold stock prices imploded. Positions were added ‘all in and around’ a historic bottom and this trade has paid off quite well.

Okay, that is history. Now what?

We have been watching the GSR (among other indicators) tirelessly and its message for the markets has been actively bearish for about a month now. To review, when silver is rising relative to gold it indicates a willingness on the part of market participants to accept risk, to ‘play’. The GSR has been working like a more sensitive version of the VIX in recent years. Ah, but there is literally a world of ratios that can be used to advantage when attempting to gauge the winds of the markets.

In the chart included today we see gold in ratio to the Reuters CRB commodity index ($CCI). Even as many people micromanage nominal prices of asset markets, gold’s ratio to commodities tells a story of a bottom in the making, which of course tells a story of a top in the making in what NFTRH called ‘Hope 09’.

Let this short article serve as notice that gold’s consolidation vs. the assets of hope looks to be in its final stages. This is a bullish chart, and in this weekend’s NFTRH41, we will look at gold’s ratio to several other assets and markets. It is time to pay attention and it is time to get it right.

Markets travel in roundabout directions and cycles – both short and long term – must be endured. It is technical, sentiment and market ratio analysis that guides us through these cycles and keeps us on the right track. Please heed the above chart and consider what will happen when gold finishes consolidating the explosive ratio gains of 2008.

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My Note: If you payed attention and I know my readers did, it is time to buy Gold now, the consolidation is almost over. This means Gold and Precious Metals are about to resume their rally and very soon! Once again, I am calling for Gold at $1250 and Silver at $25 by the end of this year. You are never hurt by getting in early, but definitely hurt by getting in too late or missing it altogether; Buy Precious metals in any form. If Bullion TAKE DELIVERY! -Good Investing! – jschulmansr

Nothing in today’s post should be considered as an offer to buy or sell any securities or other investments; it is presented for informational purposes only. As a good investor, consult your Investment Advisor/s, Do Your Due Diligence, Read All Prospectus/s and related information carefully before you make any investing decisions and/or investments. – jschulmansr

I am not a “birther” unless- my asking Mr. Obama to provide his Birth Certificate for everyone to see- qualifies me as one. The idea that Mr. Obama refuses to do so borders on unbelievable! Now he is facing “criminal” charges because he hasn’t. Please don’t tell me he already has, he hasn’t. The certificate of live birth is not the same as a Birth Certificate, and even that was proven to be a forgery! Next why is he refusing to let anyone see anything about his personal past history, like school records,and anything where then he had to show some kind of identification to be registered and be enrolled. Mr. Obama, what are you hiding? Could it actually be that you really aren’t qualified and eligible to be the President? I have some real concerns and now the rest of America is starting to share those concerns! Could your meeting with the Supreme Court Justice’s was really about that very issue? Something like, hey guys I’m not actually eligible to be President, so if you ‘hear any of the “eligibility” cases’ and this is found out (not eligible to be President)- it will cause widespread rioting and destruction; along with a complete loss of trust by the American people. Is that what really transpired? Mr. Obama prove your eligibility! Another concern I have is what you are doing to this country. You say you inherited this mess from President Bush and a 1 Trillion Deficit mess. Yet your cure is to spend 10 Trillion of American money (to supposedly fix the problem), more money total, than every President from Washington to Bush Jr. combined! Our own allies are even imploring you to stop this disastrous course. China is warning you that they are going to buy less, if any at all of our new debt you are having issued, and are afraid they are going lose big time on their investments in our debt because of it. Your policies are destroying the American dollar or is that part of your plan? You continue to have your agents in the Fed and treasury illegaly try to artificially supress precious metals prices, especially Gold and Silver prices by leasing out or outright selling of America’s Gold at a negative basis. Why is their no transparency and accounting of where and how America’s gold is being used. China and Russia are calling for a new reserve currency run by the IMF and where the U.S. Dollar would only represent 40% of the value of the currency basket. One minute you are against that along with Geitner and the next you are both saying that that might be a good idea? Real time inflation. not the conjured, manipulated reports (like yesterday’s durable goods); currently the inflation rate is at 8.5% up another point in just the last month! China and Russia are aware of this and are buying up and increasing their Gold Reserves to protect themselves from Inflation and a falling Dollar. Next you are mortgaging my kids, grandchildren. and great grandchildren’s futures under an onerous, outrageous levels of debt. . So I ask based on these facts alone – Mr. Obama where is your Birth Certificate? If you don’t have anything to hide then why not, just order the State of Hawaii to provide (unseal) the Birth Certificate? What are you afraid of? Mr. Obama prove your eligibility to be the President of the United States…

Orly Taitz has been working on a number of cases that raise questions over Obama’s qualification to be president under the Constitution’s demand that the office be occupied only by a “natural born” citizen.

Taitz was informed by Karen Thornton of the Department of Justice that all of the case documents and filings have arrived and have been forwarded to the Office of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, including three dossiers and the Quo Warranto case.

“Coincidently, after Dr. Taitz called me with that update, she received another call from Officer Giaccino at the Supreme Court,” the website posting said. “Officer Giaccino stated both pleadings have been received and [are] being analyzed now.”

The report from the Supreme Court said the documents that Taitz hand-delivered to Chief Justice John Roberts at his appearance at the University of Idaho a little over a week ago also were at the Supreme Court.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the legal challenges question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.

Adding fuel to the fire is Obama’s persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers. While his supporters cite an online version of a “Certification of Live Birth” from Hawaii, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.

“The citizenship of someone who has reached the point of running for president of the United States is not really an issue,” Abercrombie said.

Posey said he made the suggestion because he’s seeking the truth, and “the more and more I get called names by leftwing activists, partisan hacks and political operatives for doing it, the more and more I think I did the right thing.”

Hawaiian officials have confirmed they have a birth certificate on file for Obama, but it cannot be released without his permission, and they have not revealed the information it contains.

John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution working with the Foundation on Moral Law, told WND a demand for verification of Obama’s eligibility appears to be legitimate.

Eidsmoe said it’s clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents that “he does not want the public to know.”

Other members of Congress have been reading from what appears to be a prepared script in response to queries about Obama’s eligibility:

Among the statements from members of Congress:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: “Thank you for your recent e-mail. Senator Obama meets the constitutional requirements for presidential office. Rumors pertaining to his citizenship status have been circulating on the Internet, and this information has been debunked by Snopes.com, which investigates the truth behind Internet rumors.”

Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.: “Presidential candidates are vetted by voters at least twice – first in the primary elections and again in the general election. President-Elect Obama won the Democratic Party’s nomination after one of the most fiercely contested presidential primaries in American history. And, he has now been duly elected by the majority of voters in the United States. Throughout both the primary and general election, concerns about Mr. Obama’s birthplace were raised. The voters have made clear their view that Mr. Obama meets the qualifications to hold the office of president.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio: “President Obama has provided several news organizations with a copy of his birth certificate, showing he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Hawaii became a state in 1959, and all individuals born in Hawaii after its admission are considered natural-born United States citizens. In addition, the Hawaii State Health Department recently issued a public statement verifying the authenticity of President Obama’s birth certificate.”

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.: “The claim that President Obama was born outside of the United States, thus rendering him ineligible for the presidency, is part of a larger number of pernicious and factually baseless claims that were circulated about then-Senator Obama during his presidential campaign. President Obama was born in Hawaii.” The response provided no documentation.

Taitz had approached Justice Antonin Scalia during his appearance in Los Angeles before meeting with Roberts at his Idaho appearance. She’s suggested that there was misbehavior at the Supreme Court because some of her earlier papers were not filed properly, nor were they returned to her.

Hers was just one of the issues reportedly presented to the Supreme Court justices in conference for an evaluation on whether a hearing should be held. No hearing ever has been held at that level on the evidence involved. Her Quo Warranto case is pending at the Justice Department. It essentially raises a demand for proof by what authority Obama has assumed the powers of president.

Here is a partial listing and status update for some of the cases over Obama’s eligibility:

New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn’t properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.

Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg has three cases pending, including Berg vs. Obama in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a separate Berg vs. Obama which is under seal at the U.S. District Court level and Hollister vs. Soetoro a/k/a Obama, (now dismissed) brought on behalf of a retired military member who could be facing recall to active duty by Obama.

Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama’s dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.

Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut’s secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.

Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama’s eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama’s citizenship. His case was denied.

In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.

Also in Ohio, there was the Greenberg v. Brunner case which ended when the judge threatened to assess all case costs against the plaintiff.

In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama’s citizenship. The case was denied.

In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama’s birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia’s secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.

California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.

In his complaint addressed to Obama via U.S Attorney Russell Dedrick and Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Schmutzer, Eastern District, Tennessee, Fitzpatrick wrote: “I have observed and extensively recorded invidious attacks by military-political aristocrats against the Constitution for twenty years.

“Now you have broken in and entered the White House by force of contrivance, concealment, conceit, dissembling, and deceit. Posing as an impostor president and commander in chief you have stripped civilian command and control over the military establishment.”

He cited the deployment of “U.S. Army active duty combat troops into the small civilian community of Samson, Ala.,” and said, “We come now to this reckoning. I accuse you and your military-political criminal assistants of TREASON. I name you and your military criminal associates as traitors. Your criminal ascension manifests a clear and present danger. You fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works.

“I identify you as a foreign born domestic enemy,” he wrote.

The 1975 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis told WND that a short time after his complaint was filed he was visited by two U.S. Secret Service agents, but they left after telling him they perceived no threat to the president in the document.

Likewise, officials with the U.S. attorney’s office declined to respond to a WND request for a comment.

Fitzpatrick told WND the U.S. Justice Department needs to look into the issue.

WND reported this week that officials at the Justice Department, along with those at the Supreme Court, confirmed that documentation in a case challenging Obama’s eligibility had arrived and was scheduled for an evaluation.

That case is being handled by California attorney Orly Taitz, who is working through her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation to handle several cases raising questions over Obama’s qualification to be president under the Constitution’s demand that the office be occupied only by a “natural born” citizen.

Taitz was informed by Karen Thornton of the Department of Justice that all of the case documents and filings have arrived and have been forwarded to the Office of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, including three dossiers.

Fitzpatrick said he has devoted his career fulltime to investigating issues in military justice and defending wrongly accused soldiers, sailors and Marines. His own career was torpedoed by a court-martial more than 20 years ago over his authorization of the use of a ship’s fund to sent an officer to the funeral for his brother, who had been killed by terrorists.

He alleges his case was fabricated and even his signature was forged by officials connected to his case. He points to the fact that he ultimately retired and was awarded a military pension as support for his allegations.

But he says the new complaint against Obama should define the issue of the president’s eligibility.

“They either have to come and get me or get Mr. Obama’s eligibility proved. He has an officer in his military saying he is guilty of trespass on the Constitution,” Fitzpatrick told WND.

“They can recall me against my will to active duty,” he said. “I would refuse. It’s an illegal order by a man who is not by commander in chief.”

WND has reported on dozens of civil case legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the legal challenges question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.

Adding fuel to the fire is Obama’s persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers. While his supporters cite an online version of a “Certification of Live Birth” from Hawaii, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.

Hawaiian officials have confirmed they have a birth certificate on file for Obama, but it cannot be released without his permission, and they have not revealed the information it contains.

John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution working with the Foundation on Moral Law, has told WND a demand for verification of Obama’s eligibility appears to be legitimate.

Eidsmoe said it’s clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents that “he does not want the public to know.”

Nothing in today’s post should be considered as an offer to buy or sell any securities or other investments; it is presented for informational purposes only. As a good investor, consult your Investment Advisor/s, Do Your Due Diligence, Read All Prospectus/s and related information carefully before you make any investing decisions and/or investments. –jschulmansr

Wow! What a firestorm I raised when I posted Part 1 yesterday! I was called various names, accused of being an Indnesian secret agent, and more. Everyone went back and pointed out that the “Certificate of Live Birth” posted was the the proof and how stupid was I to keep bringing this up, or that I had “sour grapes”. So let me answer…This “proof” was proven by forensic experts to be a forgery with an edge border around the certificate from a different year than then year when Barak Obama was born.

Yet no one could post an answer to my next statement if I go to get my passport they U.S. Government will not accept that certificate as proof of citizenship; I must go get and provide my actual long form original certified copy of my Birth Certificate. They also could not provide an answer as to why Barak Obama will not produce his. Is he magically somehow above the rest of us as citizens? According to the constitution he is not!

So I am still very concerned about Barak Obama’s eligibility to be my President. If he is really a legal citizen of the United States then why can’t he just provide his Birth Certificate? Why is he hiring so may lawyers and legal defense teams to prevent people from seeing his information and keeping it sealed up? What does that information contain that he is afraid of? What does he have to hide?

Could the reason we have this problem is because Howard Dean and the Democrats never vetted their candidate? Just like Obama has not properly vetted his cabinet appointments. This is basic. If they can’t even do that right, how would you expect them to manage your health care? This is the reason we are now faced with this Constitutional dilemma. It is a major issue for anyone who must follow orders from the ‘Commander-in-Chief’, especially all our men in uniform. It can’t be that hard to find out if Obama is really a natural born American. This issue must be resolved, there is no question about it. Let’s get with it folks.

This all seems surreal. Nothing like this fraud has ever been attempted before in the history of this Country. Who else knows what information are in those sealed documents and aided and abetted Obama in this fraud? Who were the people who was suppose to have vetted Obama?

Here is this Man is taking up residence in the White House and being in control of everything including our nuclear weapons and no one has seen any documented proof of who this person really is or where he came from. He has also embarked on the largest spending program ever seen in this country which most financial experts agree will provide very little actual stimulus to you or me, the average American citizen.

I don’t believe that the Attorney General will appoint a special Prosecutor to investigate these charges.

What is the next legal step?

The Supreme Court refuses to hear any of the cases that have been brought against Obama. It seems that may be why Obama had that closed meeting with the Court. He probably told the Justices something along the lines of “I’m not eligible, but if you take a case and rule against me there will be rioting in the streets. At which time I will be forced to call for Martial Law and that will probably lead to Revolution. If you leave well enough alone, they will eventually give up or I will have them shut up”. Either one of these scenarios will surely destroy us, So what happens now?

I will re-iterate this, I hope he can and will just show us bona-fide proof that he is an American citizen. Because as I just stated we will have either revolution or at least rioting in every major city of this country. If he does prove his eligibility I will be one of the first to shout this out from the rooftops! I will immediately publish both an apology and retraction of any and all articles which I have published doubting his American Citizenship. But at the rate Barak is trying to hide his personal information, the amount of money he is spending to keep it hidden is enough to cause ANY sane and prudent man to question what he is doing.

Plaintiff: ‘In the worst case … it’s going to be revolution in the streets’

Military officers from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are working with California attorney Orly Taitz and her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, citing a legal right established in British common law nearly 800 years ago and recognized by the U.S. Founding Fathers to demand documentation that may prove – or disprove – Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.

Taitz told WND today she has mailed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a request that he “relate Quo Warranto on Barack Hussein Obama II to test his title to president before the Supreme Court.”

The lengthy legal phrase essentially means an explanation is being demanded for what authority Obama is using to act as president. An online constitutional resource says Quo Warranto “affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents.”

John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution now working with the Foundation on Moral Law, an organization founded by former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore after he was removed from office for formally recognizing the Ten Commandments’ influence in the U.S., said the demand is a legitimate course of action.

“She basically is asking, ‘By what authority’ is Obama president,” he told WND. “In other words, ‘I want you to tell me by what authority. I don’t really think you should hold the office.’

“She probably has some very good arguments to make,” Eidsmoe said.

The letter, dispatched to Holder today, is the latest development in the quest by a multitude of lawyers and plaintiffs nationwide for documentation that Obama qualifies to be president under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Several of the cases have involved emergency appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court in which justices have declined even to hear arguments. Among the cases turned down without a hearing at the high court have been petitions by Philip Berg, Cort Wrotnowski, Leo Donofrio and Taitz.

Taitz’ plaintiffs, some of whom potentially face life-or-death situations in defense of the U.S. Constitution on a daily basis, note that information on Quo Warranto against a federal officer normally is related to the attorney general. But since Holder is an Obama friend and appointee, they are asking for the appointment of a special prosecutor to help in presenting documentation to the Supreme Court.

“This information on Quo Warranto includes action between the United States ex rel. and the State of Hawaii over original birth records of Barack H. Obama II being withheld per Hawaii’s privacy laws. Hawaii’s action obstructs the constitutional duties of election officers to validate or evaluate President Elect Obama qualifications to become President under U.S. CONST. art. II § 1, and amend. XX § 3,” the document said.

Eidsmoe said it’s clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents, “he does not want the public to know.

” What else could be the reason for his hiring law firms across the nation to fight any request for information as basic as his Occidental College records from the early 1980s, he asked. A separate lawsuit has sought the documents to find out whether they indicate Obama, possibly under the name Barry Soetero, attended the college on aid for foreign students.

Obama’s critics warn of the impending constitutional crisis should it be discovered Obama is ineligible and the resulting chaos of trying to figure out what, if any, of his executive branch orders, should be valid.

According to the online Constitution.org resource: “The common law writ of quo warranto has been suppressed at the federal level in the United States, and deprecated at the state level, but remains a right under the Ninth Amendment which was understood and presumed by the Founders, and which affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents.”

Taitz told WND the “relators” include members of the Army, Air Force, Marines and Army and feature recipients of some of the highest honors the nation awards, including the Purple Heart.

One is Harry Riley, a veteran military officer who spent part of his career in the Pentagon. Riley said the issue is basically over whether Americans will allow “the trashing” of their Constitution.

“Myself, along with hundreds of thousands of other warriors, have fought for the U.S. Constitution. The whole issue is one of constitutional crisis, in my judgment. How can an individual become the commander-in-chief, or the president of the U.S., with questions regarding his constitutional qualifications?” he asked.

“The whole idea is that America cannot allow an individual to serve as president who isn’t qualified. It destroys our Constitution. It’s the bedrock of our nation,” he said.

“In the worst case, in the long run, if he continues [to fight revealing his documentation,] it’s going to be revolution in the streets,” he warned.

“It’s just mindboggling to think an individual who’s been sworn in as the president of the United States would be so small and be such a hypocrite who would be unwilling to simply show a birth certificate,” Riley said.

Taitz told WND she has assembled a list of about 100 names of people – so far – who are willing to be plaintiffs in such a demand.

Childers told WND he’d be perfectly happy if Obama is legitimate, but the truth still matters.

“I personally admire many things about him,” he said. “But if he’s not legitimate, if he’s allowed to violate the Constitution, what else are they going to violate? Take my guns, and my television, telephone? What’s the limit?”

Taitz told WND she’s asking for the appointment of a special prosecutor, such as the role Archibald Cox played in investigating Watergate.

According to author Chester Antieau in his “The Practice of Extraordinary Remedies,” Quo Warranto is one of the oldest rights in common law.

“The earliest case on record appears in the 9th year of Richard I, 1198,” he wrote. “The statute of 9 Anne c. 20 in 1710 authorized a proper officer of a court, with leave of the court, to exhibit an information in the nature of quo warranto, at the ‘relation’ of any person desiring to prosecute the same – to be called the relator. Early American statutes were modeled after the Statute of Anne and, indeed, the statute has often been ruled to be part of the common law we inherited from England.”

Antieau noted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled, “Quo warranto is addressed to preventing a continued exercise of authority unlawfully asserted, rather than to correct what has already been done. …”

ts first recognize purpose, he said, is “to determine the title of persons claiming possession of public offices and to oust them if they are found to be usurpers.”

Among those who are subject to its demands, under court precedent, are chief executives in other U.S. governmental positions, including governors and sheriffs.

As WND has reported on several occasions, none of the so-called “evidence” of Obama’s constitutional eligibility produced thus far is beyond reasonable doubt nor as iron-clad as simply producing an authentic birth certificate, something Americans are required to do regularly but the president still refuses to do.

As Jerome Corsi, WND senior staff writer, explained, “The main reason doubts persist regarding Obama’s birth certificate is this question: If an original Hawaii-doctor-generated and Hawaii-hospital-released Obama birth certificate exists, why wouldn’t the senator and his campaign simply order the document released and end the controversy?

“That Obama has not ordered Hawaii officials to release the document,” Corsi writes, “leaves doubts as to whether an authentic Hawaii birth certificate exists for Obama.”

Although Obama officials have told WND all such allegations are “garbage,” here is a partial listing and status update for some of the cases over Obama’s eligibility:

New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn’t properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.

Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg has three cases pending, including Berg vs. Obama in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a separate Berg vs. Obama which is under seal at the U.S. District Court level and Hollister vs. Soetoro a/k/a Obama, brought on behalf of a retired military member who could be facing recall to active duty by Obama.

Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama’s dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.

Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut’s secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.

Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama’s eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama’s citizenship. His case was denied.

In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.

Also in Ohio, there was the Greenberg v. Brunner case which ended when the judge threatened to assess all case costs against the plaintiff.

In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama’s citizenship. The case was denied.

In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama’s birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia’s secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.

California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.

Nothing in today’s post should be considered as an offer to buy or sell any securities or other investments; it is presented for informational purposes only. As a good investor, consult your Investment Advisor/s, Do Your Due Diligence, Read All Prospectus/s and related information carefully before you make any investing decisions and/or investments. –jschulmansr

Are We Getting Ripped Off? Read Today’s Post dealing with the Bailout, Gold Price Manipulation and more. I’m back, we have a new President, what does this mean for your investments… Read On and Good Investing! – jschulmansr

There’s currently an idea to fix the financial system that’s getting quite a bit of traction: an RTC-type program whereby the government would buy $1 trillion of troubled assets from struggling U.S. banks, with the goal of restoring them to health so they can begin lending again, leading to an economic recovery.

The problem with this idea (let’s call it “New RTC”) is that either the government will pay market prices for the toxic assets – in which case, it will simply accelerate the collapse of our financial system – or pay above-market prices, in which case taxpayers will likely suffer big losses.

“Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in this country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But people today use the term `inflation’ to refer to the phenomenon that is an inevitable consequence of inflation, that is the tendency of all prices and wage rates to rise. The result of this deplorable confusion is that there is no term left to signify the cause of this rise in prices and wages.”

— Ludwig von Mises

It’s true that just about every asset class is coming down in price right now. This, however, is not deflation — as I have said so many times recently, much to many readers’ unqualified chagrin. To the contrary, these declines are the products of de-leveraging — not deflation — and the distinction is nearly incalculably important, although the subtlety seems to elude even the most astute these days.

If the previous premise is true (which it is), any removal of money from the economy would eventually result in an increase in the value of our currency, relative to everything else. And that, in turn, would eventually translate into lower prices in dollars. But that’s clearly not what is happening. No, the Fed is printing money, sending the amount in the economy higher than ever seen in U.S. history. That’s not deflationary. That’s inflationary.

Just so you’ll know, here’s the definition of inflation I’m using. And before you pooh-pooh it with too much eagerness, remember that one of its authors, F.A. Hayek, won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974.

Look, the thing we should be worried about is relative value, not “inflation,” per se. It’s not about the growth of M0, or M1, or M2 (or even M3, if you keep up with shadowstats.com), so much as it is about what the money supply is doing relative to everything else that is happening. I know assets are falling in price — believe me, I get no shortage of reminders every single day. But the amount of money in the system — not just M0 — is increasing at a tremendous rate. I won’t argue that the relative value of things like real estate and equities are going to continue to drop — maybe even dramatically, and for a long time — in terms of demand (or lack thereof). No, what I’m most concerned about is that demand will stay extremely low, and yet prices will rise anyway because of the increase in the amount of money in the system.

But it’s not just money; it’s also Treasuries. The Fed has specifically stated that its objective is to stimulate “inflation” (by its definition). It wants prices to rise, and it’s going to do everything it can to find success. But the amount of money in the system is unprecedented. When the Treasury bubble starts to collapse, yields are going to explode. Yes, the Fed will probably print more money to buy down the long-end of the curve, but how long will that work? Some people say years, but how? Do you really think the Chinese and the Japanese are going to keep funding that sort of behavior? Or even more importantly, do you think they’re just going to sit on their current holdings? Probably not, and if they start dumping Treasuries, yields are going much higher.

It’s not a matter of if this is going to happen. Yields can’t stay where they are for any sustained amount of time, and once they start rising, so will prices. But will demand for, say, houses have increased? No. Cars? No. Boats? Televisions? No. Why? The American consumer is tapped out.

Credit card companies are tightening limits prodigiously. Teaser rates are all but gone. Home equity has dried up. The consumer has driven two-thirds of our economy for at least the last few decades, and now the consumer is dead. There’s another aspect to this that I won’t go too deep into: the American consumer protects his or her credit score for one reason — to obtain future credit. But the consumer also knows that loans have dried up — not just today, but for the very distant future as well. You know these consumers have to be thinking about defaulting; if they can’t get loans anyway, why would they not default on thousands of dollars in unsecured credit card debt? I plan on writing more about this in future articles, but suffice it to say, I think credit card companies are going to give us the next blow to our collective stomach, and it’s going to hurt.

So here we have a situation in which demand is gone, and yet prices and rates are rising — because of inflation (printing money) and the Treasury collapse. And that’s the point: it’s not going to come from just one source. It’s not just going to be inflation (printing money). It’s not just going to be the collapse in Treasuries. It’s not just going to be the nearly unfathomable costs of the stimulus packages that are coming online in the next two years. It’s going to be the confluence of all of it. And if I’m right about the continued deterioration in credit markets, things will be even worse.

You think it’s not different this time? Add it all up, in real dollars — the staggering amount of debt, the parabolic rise of currency in the system, the annihilation of real-estate investment, and the demise of the consumer. $8.5 trillion committed to bailouts and stimulus packages. Oh, yes it is different this time. It’s very different.

Credit cards didn’t even exist in 1930, and the dollar was backed by gold. Credit cards barely existed in 1973. Nixon had just taken us off the gold standard, and look what happened? Volcker was immensely lucky to have stopped hyperinflation, and look at the extreme measures he had to employ to do it.

Of course, every time I bring all of this up — which is a lot lately — somebody starts talking about the velocity of money. And pretty soon after that, somebody starts talking about the multiplier effect.

Yes, the U.S. employs a fractional reserve system, and while that system certainly lends to rising prices and yields, the amplifier effect is not inflation. Like the printing of money, the fractional reserve system is only one ingredient in the poison that lends to the ultimate catastrophe inspired by central banks: rising prices and increased costs of borrowing.

And then there’s velocity…

While I am eternally grateful to my critics for forcing me to defend the theories I hold dear, I sometimes fatigue of the incessant snapping at my heels by people who want me to know that the velocity of money has slowed down. I know the velocity of money has slowed. It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to stay this low for long, and when it starts speeding up, it’s not going to be a “good thing.” Treasuries are going to break, rates and prices are going to rise, and all that money pressing against the dam is going to find a crack. Why? It has to. People will flee from dollars that are losing value. They will extract all the dollars sloshing around the system, and they will buy commodities and durables in order to preserve the value of their wealth.

Remember, just because the dollar is losing value does not mean that the concomitant subsequent rise in certain asset classes necessarily means that demand for all assets has increased dramatically — as it did during previous eras of easy money. Demand for assets economy-wide can continue to wane even as people spend dollars as fast as they can get them in the midst of rising prices. And this is a very important distinction: prices can rise because of demand, but prices can also rise because of excessive increases in the amount of money in the system. If prices are rising without a simultaneous increase in demand, well, I can’t think of a more dangerous economic environment to be in.

You don’t believe it can happen? You think there’s a huge demand for houses, cars, and boats in Zimbabwe? Prices there are rising exponentially, but there is very little demand for assets — other than staples, of course. What do you think their velocity of money is?

The other day I wrote that Treasuries and the dollar are not “safer” than gold, and for my efforts I was heckled by several readers. Ultimately, however, flight-to-quality will seek the true risk-free rate of return, and this is yet another factor that will contribute to the imminent ferocity of the move that’s coming. Once Treasuries unwind, people and institutions will scramble to find a place to put the money they had once placed in the “safety” of U.S. government debt. And unless you know of a medium whose historical consistency and safety surpasses gold’s, that will be the place investors find haven.

Just for future reference: when I say the dollar’s going to fail (which it is), and you’re hovering over your keyboard, poised like some bird-of-prey, ready to strike me with all the ire of God-upon-Sodom, will you try to remember that I acknowledge velocity is, at least for the time-being, near zero. Will you also try to remember that I don’t believe the massive increase in currency alone will not be responsible for imminent rising rates and prices? In fact, I think Treasuries are going to play a greater role in the beginning.

Also, I agree with many of you that my timing may be a bit premature, and I exited my TBT after the last run-up. Unfortunately, today the stock market and Treasuries are getting crushed as gold rallies. I wouldn’t want to declare myself “right” based just on the behavior of these markets in recent days. That would be stupid. And yet I sit here and watch TBT move higher, wondering if getting out was even more stupid.

To add to my trepidation, some sort of manager in the South Korean finance ministry came out over the weekend and announced that the time has come to sell U.S. Treasuries. How do you think that made my stomach feel? Of course, Bernanke keeps promising to do battle with the long end of the curve, so maybe he’ll make good on his threat and I can find a point to get back in comfortably.

Of course, if I miss the move because I listened to some of you cynics. Well, at least I still own gold.

Disclosures: Paco is no longer short U.S. Treasuries (although he hopes to be again soon). He is long physical gold, and the Proshares Ultra long gold ETF (ticker: UGL).

To say that markets have been behaving “strangely” recently is an understatement.In recent weeks and months we’ve been witness to historic lows in sovereign interest rates in-the-face-of record amounts of debt being issued by governments?We’ve seen the price of gold behave counter intuitively by “not rising” in-the-face-of unprecedented systemic global economic malaise?Last, but not least, we’ve witnessed a “complete flip-flop” in the traditional pricing of Brent Crude Oil [IPE-London] versus West Texas Intermediate [NYMEX-N.Y.]?

So we have the price of gold, the price of crude oil and interest rates – three items vital to the integrity of the U.S. Dollar – ALL trading in total disregard for their underlying fundamentals?

The following is a thought provoking analysis with commentary:

The Situation In Gold

First and foremost it is imperative that everyone realize and understand that Gold “is” Money. We know that gold is money because every Central Bank in the world carries gold on their balance sheets as ‘an official reserve asset’.

With that in mind, folks would do well to read one of James Turk’s latest articles titled, The Fed’s blueprint for market intervention.In this article, Turk offers commentary on a recently unearthed 1961 document from the archives of the late, long-time former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, William McChesney Martin Jr. which details in the Fed’s own pen; their plans to intervene surreptitiously in the currency and gold markets to support the dollar and to conceal, obscure, and falsify U.S. government records so that the intervention would not be discovered.In Turk’s words,

“In short, [the newly unearthed document] lays out what the Treasury and Federal Reserve needed to do in order to begin intervening in the foreign exchange markets, but there is even more. This document plainly shows what happens when government operates behind closed doors. It also makes clear the motivations of the operators of dollar policy long described by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee and its supporters — namely, that the government would pursue intervention rather than a policy of free markets unfettered by government activity. The run to redeem dollars for gold had put the government at a crossroads, forcing it to make a decision about the future course of dollar policy. This paper describes what the government would need to do by choosing the interventionist alternative.

This document provides primary, original source supporting evidence that GATA has been right all along.”

In Feb. 2007 here’s what the Royal Bank of Canada’s Chairman, Tony Fell had to say, confirming unequivocally that gold is money,

“At Royal Bank of Canada, we trade gold bullion off our foreign exchange desks rather than our commodity desks,” says Anthony S. Fell, chairman of RBC Capital Markets, “because that’s what it is – a global currency, the only one that is freely tradable and unencumbered by vast quantities of sovereign debt and prior obligations.

“It is also the one investment and long-term store of value that cannot be adversely impacted by corrupt corporate management or incompetent politicians,” he adds – “each of which is in ample supply on a global basis.”

In short, says Fell, “don’t measure the Dollar against the Euro, or the Euro against the Yen, but measure all paper currencies against gold, because that’s the ultimate test.”

Fell’s admission coupled with the recently unearthed account of the Fed’s game plan shows that gold “is” and always has been feared as competition for the U.S. Dollar and a game plan has long been in place to thwart it.This explains why economic data has been falsified and the price of gold has been surrepticiously managed and interfered with by the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

The mounting evidence is this regard is so compelling that from this point forward any ‘economist’ attempting to explain our current situation without prefacing their explanation with an EXPLICIT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that our capital markets are not free and are in fact RIGGED by officialdom – their analysis is not worth the time to read it.In this regard, perhaps never have more prescient words been uttered than GATA’s Chris Powell in Washington in April, 2008 – when he opined, There are no markets anymore, just interventions.

The recent decoupling in price of gold as measured by the spread between the futures price and the cost to obtain physical ounces is a stark reminder that smart money is beginning to repudiate fiat money by seeking tangible ownership of goods perceived to posses value instead of derivative ‘promises’ to deliver the same.

Normally, Brent crude costs $1-$2 less than WTI crude, according to James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics. At its peak, the price spread between the two topped $5, according to his data.

The article went on to explain,

WTI usually trades at a premium to Brent “because of the slightly higher quality, and the extra journey” oil tankers have to take to get the oil to the U.S., according to Amanda Lee, a strategist at Deutsche Bank. So “WTI minus dated Brent should be roughly equal to the freight rate,” she said. Indeed, “crude-oil prices usually depend on two things: quality and location,” said Williams. “The greater the distance from the major exporters, the greater the price.”

But here’s what’s happened recently in the global crude oil market:

Brent Crude trading at a 7 Dollar premium to West Texas Intermediate is like the SUN rising in the west and setting in the east – and no-one asking any questions why?

Thanks to the unearthing of the Fed’s Playbook Document, referenced above, along with cumulative knowledge of the existence of the President’s Working Group On Financial Markets [aka the Plunge Protection Team]; we know that interference in strategic markets with national security implications is now practiced commonly by the Government and the Fed working together.No other explanation for this distortion is plausible other than NYMEX regulators like the Commodities Futures Trading Corp. [CFTC – Plunge Protection Team members] are more brazen and actively complicit in market rigging of strategic commodities than their London counterparts. This manipulation is all being done in desperation; to preserve U.S. Dollar hegemony by perpetuating the illusion that inflation is being held at bay.Ample anecdotal evidence exists in a host of articles – particularly relating to derelict CFTC oversight of COMEX gold and silver futures – archived at kirbyanalytics.com to support this position.

Spiking VLCC Rates Reflect “The Movement to Tangibles”

The “unusual” premium for Brent Crude is even more perplexing given that crude oil shipping rates [unlike their dry goods shipping counterparts, as depicted by the Baltic Dry Index] for VLCCs [very large crude carriers] have, as recently as Dec. 2008, been enjoying robust and improving charter rates,

Last week the spot rate for Suezmax tankers was in the low $40k per day range. Yesterday, I check the rates and they have popped to over $90k this week! VLCC (very large crude carriers, i.e. supertankers) rates have not jumped as much but appear to be following the trend. So what is the deal here? Oil prices are falling and so is the apparent global demand for oil. Are not oil tankers just sitting around idle like the dry bulk carriers?

The answer is somewhat counter intuitive. The spike in spot tanker rates is actually the result of the low oil prices. Many tankers are being leased on the spot market as storage tanks. Oil producers, for whatever reason, do not want to significantly slow their oil production, but at the same time do not want to sell it for $45 a barrel. So they are leasing tankers to store oil in the hope or belief that oil prices will recover shortly. Two names in news articles that I have read doing this are Royal Dutch Shell and Iran. The majority of the planet’s oil production is owned by national oil companies that have policy and employment as well as financial reasons to keep the oil flowing. So at least in the short term, the current low oil prices are a boon for tanker owners.

Oil tanker companies, like their dry cargo brethren, can sign their ships to either long term, multi-year leases or charter them on the spot market where they are leased for a single voyage at the current spot rate.

The fact that “smart money” is now paying elevated prices to lease very large crude carriers [to store physical crude for later sale] is further evidence that faith in fiat money is waning simply because – you can do the same “trade” on paper – utilizing futures – without the bother and nuisance of leasing ships and handling the physical.Ask yourself why smart money has recently become engaged in buying ‘relatively illiquid’ physical crude oil, in a world allegedly awash in the stuff, for resale at a later date – instead of playing futures, accepting promises and holding cash?

Smart money is in the process of losing confidence in cash.

Interest Rates

It is vital that everyone understand that the function of interest rates in a system of usury is to solemnly act as the efficient arbiter of capital – rising to restrict money / credit growth when the economy overheats and falling to create the opposite when the economy cools.

Interest rates no longer serve this function.

As deceitfully disastrous as the surreptitious interventions in the crude oil and gold markets has been – they pale in comparison to the travesty which has been perpetrated through the premeditated hobbling of usury.

The roots of this most wicked experiment are traceable to the appointment of Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and then to academia – Harvard – where Robert Barsky and Lawrence Summers co-authored an academic research paper in the 1980s titled, Gibson’s Paradox and the Gold Standard.The “elevator speech” of what the paper examined was the co-relation between bond prices, inflation and the price of gold and, by extension, theorized that interest rates could be driven down [or kept low] – without sacrificing the currency – in the face of and despite profligate monetary policy so long as gold prices declined or did not rise.

After a stint as Chief Economist at the World Bank, Mr. Summers brought this “theory” to Washington mid-way through the first Clinton Administration [late1993] as Under Secretary of Treasury to Robert Rubin where he began laying the groundwork – with co-conspirators Greenspan, Rubin and Clinton – for the implementation of his “theoretical research”:

Gold price suppression began in earnest concurrently with changes in how the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [OCC] begins records the mushrooming growth of derivatives [mostly interest rate swaps which – absent end user demand – only create artificial demand for government bonds]:

The Federal Reserve acting in cahoots with the U.S. Treasury utilizing the futures pits in N.Y. [COMEX] and the obscenity that has become J.P. Morgan’s Derivatives Book – the Fed / Treasury combo seized control of both the gold price and interest rates.The mechanics of how interest rate swaps were utilized to suppress interest rates is chronicled and explained in detail at Kirbyanalytics.com in a paper titled, The Elephant in the Room.

Subscribers are reading about the logical implications, and what comes next, as a result of the market manipulations outlined above as well as actionable suggestions to help insulate your investment portfolio from the inevitable fallout.

This week marks GATA’s tenth anniversary of our efforts to expose the manipulation of the gold market. In another few weeks we will mark the tenth anniversary of my appearance on CNBC (interviewed by Ron Insana) … the first and last GATA appearance on the US TV media to date … for once they heard what GATA had to say, we have been blackballed ever since. It also marks a shameful period for the US financial market press, which is now clamoring for answers as to how we ever got in the financial market/banking mess we are presently facing. For that answer they ought to first look at themselves and their dismal way of kowtowing to the rich and powerful, and banning those who are willing to challenge the Orwellian grip on what Americans are allowed to hear and know.

America is facing quite a dichotomy at the moment. We are on the Inaugural Eve of our first black President, with all the hopes and dreams he is envisioning for our country. At the same time we are enduring the most horrific financial crisis since the Great Depression.

President-elect Obama, a superb orator, is calling for Americans to pull together to effect the CHANGE he called for in his campaign, and for all of us to contribute individually to make that change happen. He has wisely warned of the tough times ahead while going all-out to ready policies ASAP which he believes are the correct way to remedy the growing economic problems of the day.

He has also assembled an economic team of advisors which are acclaimed and generally very highly regarded … including Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner and Paul Volker. Unfortunately for the GATA camp, they are the ALL-PROS of the gold price suppression scheme. It is almost like our worst nightmare. On paper it represents anything but change as far as US gold policy is concerned, and has the potential to make our investment lives miserable for years to come. After all…

*Robert Rubin coined the phrase “US Strong Dollar Policy,” and flaunted the phrase. Rigging the price of gold was that policy’s lynchpin. What else was there? Steve Forbes was on Fox News Saturday talking about how important he believes it is for America to MAKE the dollar strong again. He talked sheepishly about gold in vague terms and referred to Rubin.

Robert Rubin hatched the gold price suppression scheme while running Goldman Sachs’ operations in London. This was many years ago, when interest rates were very high (say from 6 to 12% in the US). Rubin had Goldman Sachs borrowed gold from the central banks at about a 1% interest rate. Then he sold the gold into the physical market, using the proceeds to fund their basic operations. This was like FREE money, as long as the price of gold did not rise to any sustained degree for any length of time.

He continued his innovative money ploy as CEO of Goldman Sachs in New York and then put his Strong Dollar Policy ploy on steroids as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton.*Lawrence Summers followed Rubin as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and who could be more qualified to continue Rubin’s gold price suppression scheme than him? After all, while at Harvard he co-authored a paper, “Gibson’s Paradox and The Gold Standard.” The bottom line of Summers’ analysis is that “gold prices in a free market should move inversely to real interest rates.” Control gold and it will help to control interest rates.

Obama has designated Mr. Summers to be the Director of the U.S. National Economic Council.

*Which brings us to Timothy Geithner, who is President-elect Obama’s nominee to be U. S. Treasury Secretary. Geithner was named president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on November 17, 2003. In that capacity, he serves as the Vice Chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for formulating the nation’s monetary policy.

Mr. Geithner joined the Department of Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations for five Secretaries of the Treasury in a variety of positions. He served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.

Geithner is also happens to be a member of the Bank for International Settlements and since 2005 has been Chairman of the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems. You might want to see what The CPSS undertakes “at their own discretion” as listed here:

*And then there is the venerable Paul Volcker, who so effectively brought down runaway inflation in the US, starting in 1980. His one regret:

“Joint intervention in gold sales to prevent a steep rise in the price of gold (in the 1970s), however, was not undertaken. That was a mistake.” … Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker (writing in his memoirs).

All-Pros? All-World is more like it when it comes to devotees of suppressing the price of gold. Outside of Volcker, the other three are those most responsible for making it happen in the first place.

So what’s the point? To get us all depressed over what lies ahead? NO, just the opposite.

On December 18th, on GATA’s behalf, I met with Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner who showed interest in hearing what we had to say. There were three others from the CFTC in attendance, including Elizabeth L. Ritter, Deputy General Counsel of that organization.

From my MIDAS commentary later in that afternoon…

Bart listened intently and took notes, as did one of the others, and asked numerous questions. Basically, I laid out our GATA presentation as I explained in the Sunday Midas. I am not going to get into all the details of what they said, as we will see what takes place in the months to come … except to say that I chuckled when saying to them if they really wanted to comprehend what the real gold price suppression scheme is all about, all they have to do is go to their new proposed Chairman … at the right time. No one knows what is going on better than he does.

(Insert- Gary Gensler was nominated that day to be the new chairman of the CFTC. Gensler was Undersecretary of the Treasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999).

Gensler spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, one of the ringleaders of The Gold Cartel, making partner when he was 30, becoming head of the company’s fixed income and currency operations in Tokyo by the mid-90’s.

As the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for domestic finance in the last two years of the Clinton administration, Gensler found himself in the position of overseeing policies in the areas of U.S. financial markets, debt management, financial services, and community development. Gensler advocated the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which exempted credit default swaps and other derivatives from regulation.

Could The Gold Cartel have recruited a better ALL-PRO/ALL-WORLD man for their team? It is also important to keep in mind that chairman of the CFTC is one of the four members of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Now why does a bureaucrat need to participate with the President and US Treasury Secretary on the markets? I thought the CFTC was supposed to regulate them, not be a part of policy.)

I did not hold back and said the main culprit of The Gold Cartel was our own government (their own boss), who has been in league with bullion banks like JP Morgan Chase, and others, to suit their own hidden agenda….

I was very impressed with Bart Chilton (very sharp guy) and he mentioned that my trip to D.C. would not be in vain.

***

What I stressed most at the meeting was that the gold price suppression scheme would not survive another four years, over the length of Obama’s elected term … and presented lengthy documentation to prove my point … meaning The Gold Cartel would run out of enough available central bank gold to meet a growing annual supply/demand deficit over the next four years. The bottom line was that Obama could stop the gold price manipulation scheme now and allow the price of gold to trade freely, thereby letting the Bush Administration be the fall guy; or he could let his economic team persuade him to carry on the status quo, in which case the price of gold will blow sky high in the years ahead, and he would have to take the blame for the resulting ramifications … especially when the gold scandal becomes a huge public ordeal.

What better way for Obama himself to understand the true gold situation than to ask his top economic advisors what the real deal is. If GATA is correct, and we have been on target for years, the U.S. has a BIG problem when it comes to its gold reserves (how much of it has been encumbered and is therefore GONE?) That is an essay unto itself, with many variables to be discussed, and for another time. All Obama has to do is get the five above-mentioned gentlemen in a room and get right to the nitty-gritty. They can start with the extensive package I handed to Bart Chilton, who is a member of the Obama transition team, and someone who once worked for Tom Daschle, formerly the Democratic leader in the Senate for ten years, and is now Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee.

What Bart Chilton does with what I gave to him is his business, but since he told me my visit would not be in vain, I assume GATA’s extensive presentation did not go into the dumpster.

Meanwhile, in GATA’s tenth anniversary year, we are making our own call for CHANGE, and are pressing on. Obama has stated over and over again he wants THE PEOPLE to be represented and asked us to give him input. Who has more pertinent input go get to him than our camp? Therefore, we are asking everyone interested in a free gold market to make a renewed effort to further disseminate our decade’s worth of evidence of gold market manipulation into the public domain by contacting the financial market media and to others in the Obama transition team (if you have any contacts).

I know how frustrating it has been to get the jaded financial market media to listen to, and then acknowledge, what we have to say, but that was yesterday and perhaps times have changed due to the growing financial market crisis, and yearning to understand how we got here. After all President-elect Obama is urging for “government accountability” and “transparency.”

This call to arms has been instigated by the dramatic and sudden discovery of an important document buried in the Federal Reserve’s archives by writer and researcher Elaine Supkis. This document is posted on her blog at:

The document, which is marked “Confidential,” is from the papers of William McChesney Martin, Jr., and this collection is held by the Missouri Historical Society. A scanned image of the original document is posted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis at the following link:

Most importantly, GATA consultant James Turk has brilliantly dissected this document in an essay titled, “The Federal Reserve’s Blueprint for Market Intervention,” which has been served at The Matisse Table and at www.GATA.org…

In short, it lays out what the Treasury and Federal Reserve needed to do in order to begin intervening in the foreign exchange markets, but there is even more. This document plainly shows what happens when government operates behind closed doors. It also makes clear the motivations of the operators of dollar policy long described by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee and its supporters — namely, that the government would pursue intervention rather than a policy of free markets unfettered by government activity. The run to redeem dollars for gold had put the government at a crossroads, forcing it to make a decision about the future course of dollar policy. This paper describes what the government would need to do by choosing the interventionist alternative.

This document provides primary, original source supporting evidence that GATA has been right all along.

I have long hoped that a “confidential” document like this one would eventually emerge. There are no doubt countless more like it, as evidenced by the Federal Reserve’s and the Treasury’s refusal to provide all the documents requested by GATA under its recent Freedom of Information Act request. Maybe those documents will eventually see the light of day too.

***

James makes a key point regarding one of the assertions of this report…

“The basic purpose of such operations would be to maintain confidence in the dollar.”

James T notes…

“This statement confirms one of the basic planks of much of the work by me and others that has been published by GATA over the years. The efforts to cap the gold price have one aim. It is to make the dollar look worthy of being the world’s reserve currency when in fact it is not.”

***

This significant report was written some 48 years ago, yet could have been written at any time in the past 10 years during which GATA has discovered blatant manipulation of the prices of gold and silver … as well as noted ludicrous counterintuitive dollar market action, which has been most noticeable in recent days, as our hysterical financial crisis in the US intensifies.

James Turk’s title says it all: it is a blueprint for the gold price and financial market manipulation so prevalent now. Ironically, there is a common misconception out there that the US is in the financial market mess it is in today because of too much deregulation. To some extent that is very true, as the likes of Secretary Paulson and Gary Gensler urged Congress to allow the US investment banks to increase the allowable debt/credit on their books from 12:1 to 40:1.

Yet, just as big a problem was the secretive interference in the US financial markets which allowed credit and risk issues to go completely out of control in America … meaning too much secretive market manipulation … and in a hidden way, too much regulation. Had the gold market not been artificially suppressed and allowed to trade freely, the price would have soared these past years, interest rates would have risen dramatically, and there would have not been the reckless investment bank shenanigans that have put our financial system in such peril. Simplistically, it is generally acknowledged that if gold had been allowed to keep up with inflation for the past 28 years, the price would be over $2,000+ per ounce. The GATA camp knows why it is not there RIGHT NOW!

Had the Plunge Protection Team (Working Group on Financial Markets) not stepped up their constant Hail Mary play activity after 9/11 to drive the DOW mysteriously higher in the last hour of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the market probably would have broken down much earlier than it did and given the investing public more of a clue that something was wrong, instead of the misleading Stepford Wives drill that “Everything is fine.”

What is profoundly disturbing about the discovery of this confidential document is it fits in with much grander conspiracy theories than where GATA is coming from. Since this document, based on what has happened, really is a blueprint for market manipulation since 1961, it feeds into the worst fears of those who are constantly on the case about the Bilderbergers, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and so on. This document to William McChesney Martin, Jr. is EXACTLY what I have been seeing and reporting over the past decade … not that much different than those who pointed out the Madoff Ponzi scheme during the same period of time. To learn that this market deception and manipulation was conceived when I was a freshman in high school is almost beyond comprehension, especially since the Wall Street crowd hasn’t permitted a serious discussion about it ALL THIS TIME! Nor has our government allowed a true independent audit of US gold reserves since the Eisenhower Administration in 1955.

It also feeds right into the scary notion revealed in a famed President Clinton comment that goes something like … “I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be in control here when I became President.” … meaning there were far more powerful background forces pulling the strings and on how he must operate.

GATA doesn’t want to go there, but based on this new discovery, it certainly opens up further comments for fair game, even for some of GATA’s Board of Directors. Adrian Douglas (an oil industry consultant who is presently off to Angola) sent the following email to James Turk:

James,
Congratulations. This was an excellent analysis. What a stunning document! Real dynamite.

It got me thinking as to whether the heist they have pulled is bigger than we think. The BIS as we know, and as mentioned in this memo, is the organization that allows for cooperation behind the scenes of the Central banks. We know they went private to prevent any need for public disclosure seeding the opportunity for Reg Howe’s lawsuit. We have plenty of evidence that Central Bank gold holdings have been depleted. We keep saying that the gold is “gone”. But what do we mean by “the gold is gone”? Gold is not like crude oil, expensive wine, even silver… it does not get consumed. It has not “gone”; it has changed ownership. The Central Banks leased out gold to the bullion banks. Now who did the the bullion banks sell the gold to? We know that the bullion banks can’t get the gold back. If the central banks ask for the gold back the bullion banks can declare bankruptcy or settle in cash. How convenient! The Central bank gold has gone into someone else’s hands that are unknown and the loss will eventually be written off. We know that Central Banks are owned or controlled by some of the richest families and/or entities in the world. Is it possible that these “bankers” can benefit from a fiat Ponzi scheme while it can be maintained AND still end up with the gold in which case they can benefit from a return to a gold standard and when the gold standard eventually gets abused and abandoned in the future they will play the whole fiat game over again? It would certainly require cooperation between central banks to pull off such a heist.

It would be great to have the whole world sitting in a room and ask those who own more than 10 million ozs of gold to raise their hands!

The crime may be more than manipulating the price of gold to “defend the US dollar” and concealing the evidence from the public. The Cartel may well have aided and abetted embezzlement of the citizens’ gold of the Western world. And who ever has it, they bought it perfectly legally from the bullion banks with fiat currency.

This seems to make sense because Central bankers and the “elitists” (Rockefellers, Rothchilds, Morgans, Mellons, Carnegies, Vanderbilts etc etc) are not stupid. They must know gold is real money. They can study monetary history too. The fiat money game in this context is a decoy for the theft of sovereign gold.

It is not without precedent, the great inflationist, John Law, was arrested escaping with a coach loaded with gold and silver!

Adrian:
My hypothesis since 2001 is that the NWO is shifting assets out of sovereign governments and shifting liabilities back in. The goal is to reengineer global governance into the hands of private banks and corporations in a manner that dramatically centralizes control. This is why the creation of a genetically controlled seed and food supply, etc.

To achieve such centralization requires the centralization of the gold and silver stores. Whoever has the gold has the most powerful financial asset. So if you want a new centralized currency, you need a monopoly on gold and silver. I think part of the end game is to shift back to something involving some kind of gold standard.

If you use fiat currency to acquire ownership and control of all the real assets on the planet, then you need a gold standard to make sure you keep them.

So, it would not surprise me to see G8 and GATA start to move into alignment, strange as it may sound.
Catherine

Neither opinions are official GATA viewpoints, but they are intriguing, eye-opening and worth pondering.

When I met with Bart Chilton I said GATA’s high command is just a bunch of proud Americans who have stumbled across a profoundly disturbing situation. I showed the four CFTC individuals in attendance GATA’s full-page color ad in the Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2008. It was titled, “Anybody Seen Our Gold?” …

“The objective of this manipulation is to conceal the mismanagement of the US dollar so that it might retain its function as the world’s reserve currency. But to suppress the price of gold is to disable the barometer of the international financial system so that all markets may be more easily manipulated. This manipulation has been a primary cause of the catastrophic excesses in the markets that now threaten the whole world.”

… and then…

“Surreptitious market manipulation by government is leading the world to disaster.”

The DOW was a little below 13,000 at the time. I mean how right could we have been? Yet the US financial market press completely ignored this very visible ad. There was not even a query of what we were talking about and why we would spend $264,400 to make such a warning.

So now we are fast forwarding virtually a year later and the US financial markets and economy ARE in chaos. If soon to be President Obama really wants CHANGE and TRUTH, we will give him critical input on one way he can effect what he says he is looking to do.

To increase the likelihood that what GATA has discovered actually reaches him, GATA is asking all who read this, and agree with GATA, to make some small effort to get this commentary to the financial market media in the world, especially the US financial market press.

That means contacting writers and media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, CNN, Reuters, Bloomberg, the AP, Fox News, Newsweek, Time, etc. In addition, sending this Tenth Anniversary GATA commentary to widely-followed internet bloggers would also be helpful; perhaps stirring up so many out there who are searching for the reasons behind what has happened financially and economically in the US and why.

In such troubling times, Obama’s coming Presidency has given optimism and hope to many. For that to occur there must be true change, the desires for which have swept him into office. President-elect had some army. And GATA has its army.

Please take a little time and make just a small effort to help Obama help himself, even if our issue is the last one he is thinking about at the moment. Funnily enough, it ought to be one of the first, as it is one of the most prominent ones which got us into the financial market/economic nightmare we are in today. After all, it is many of the same bullion banks/investment houses our government is bailing out that were so instrumental in the gold price suppression scheme. Our mission is to let him know, via all sources possible, what the heck has happened and continues to go on.

Heralded as “the best of today’s best,” John Doody, author and publisher of the highly regarded Gold Stock Analyst newsletter, brings a unique perspective to gold stock analysis. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Doody ponders the efficacy of the Keynesian approach, makes a case for gold equities and explains how the GSA Top 10 Stocks portfolio has outperformed every other gold investment vehicle since 1994.

The Gold Report: John, you’ve stated in your newsletter, Gold Stock Analyst: “It’s clear the U.S. is going down a Keynesian approach to get out of this recession/depression.” I am curious on your viewpoint. Will the Keynesian approach actually work, or will they need to eventually move over to the Chicago School of Free Markets?

John Doody: A free market approach of letting the crisis resolve itself would work, but would cause too much damage; we’d probably lose our auto industry, and it would take too much time. As Keynes said: “In the long run we’re all dead,” so the government is trying to get a faster resolution. The Treasury is pursuing his fiscal policy idea of deficit spending. They’re borrowing the money to bail out the banks. When Obama’s plan is implemented, which could be another $700 billion in stimulus, it will be funded with more borrowings.

Bernanke and the Fed are pursuing a loose monetary policy with a now 0% interest rate. There’s actually no way we can not end up with inflation. This is much bigger than ‘The New Deal’ under Roosevelt. And I think that the market disarray over the last several months has confused investors; but when the markets settle down, it’s clear to me that it will be up for gold and gold stocks.

TGR: Is there any economic scenario that you wouldn’t see gold going up in?

JD: Basically, we’re pumping money into the system, but it’s just sitting there. It’s not being put to work, so there are those who think that we are going to enter a deflationary era. But I can’t see that. Some don’t like Bernanke, but I think there’s probably nobody better prepared to be in his role.

Bernanke is a student of the Great Depression and knows the mistakes the Fed made then, such as forcing banks to upgrade the quality of loans on their balance sheets. His approach is to buy the banks’ low quality loans, enabling them to make new loans. They haven’t done much of the latter yet, which is probably a fault of the Fed not requiring the funds received for the junk to be redeployed, but they ultimately will lend more as that’s how banks make money.

He knows in the early 1930s we went into a deflationary period of falling prices. For three or four years prices were down about 10% annually. He fully understands the risks of that, one of which is the increased burden of existing debt payments on falling incomes. The debt burden is lighter in an inflationary environment and that’s his target. Long term, he knows he can cure inflation; Volker showed us how with high interest rates in the 1980s. But there’s no sure way to cure deflation, and so Bernanke’s doing everything possible to avoid a falling price level. And I think that, because this is a service-driven economy, companies won’t lower prices to sell more goods—they will just lay off more workers, as we’re seeing now. I don’t think we’ll get the price deflation of the ’30s, and I’m sure Bernanke is going to do everything to prevent it.

TGR: But aren’t we already in a deflationary period?

JD: Well, we may be to an extent; you can get a better buy on a car. But, to put it in the simplest terms, has your yard guy lowered his price, or your pool guy, or even your webmaster?

TGR: Yes, but people opt to do things themselves versus paying other people to do it.

JD: Maybe, but if they do, it won’t show up in prices—it will show up in the unemployment statistics. So if the yard guy, pool guy or webmaster don’t lower prices and their clients become do-it-yourselfers, the effect will show up in unemployment, not inflation data.

TGR: So if every major country in the world is increasing their monetary supply, we would expect inflation. Will there be any currency that comes out of this to be considered the new base currency, sort of like the U.S. dollar is now?

JD: Well, that’s the $64,000 question. We don’t really know and, because there’s no totally obvious currency, that is why the dollar is doing well of late. But the dollar is in a long-term downtrend, in part because interest rates in Europe remain higher than here. Higher interest rates, as you know, act like a magnet in attracting investment money, which first has to be converted to the higher interest currency and that bids up its value versus the dollar.

The Euro represents an economy about the size of the U.S., so there may be some safety there. You could argue for the Swiss Franc maybe, but you know the Swiss banks (Credit Suisse, for example) have had some problems, so we’re not quite sure how that’s going.

So, to me, the only clear money that’s going to survive all this and go up, because everything else is going to go down, is gold.

TGR: What’s your view of holding physical gold versus gold equities?

JD: I only hold gold equities. They’re more readily tradable; when gold goes up, the equities tend to go up by a factor of two or three times. Of course, that works to the reverse, as we know. As gold went down, the equities went down more. But because you hold them in a government-guaranteed SIPC account, it provides ease of trading—you don’t have the worries of physical gold. . .insurance, storage or whatever. You may want to hold a few coins, but that would be about it in my opinion.

TGR: On your website, your approach to investing in gold equities is to choose a portfolio of 10 companies that have the opportunity to double in an 18- to 24-month period with the current gold price.

JD: Yes. We don’t really look forward more than 18 or 24 months; but within that timeframe, say a year from now, we could reassess and raise our targets so that, in the following 18 to 24 months, the stocks, while having gone up, could go up more still. There are lots of opportunities to stay in the same stocks as long as they continue to perform well. We’re not a trading newsletter, and as you probably know, the way we define an undervalued stock is based on two metrics.

One is market cap per ounce. The market capitalization of a company is the number of shares times its price. You divide that by its ounces of production and its ounces of proven and probable reserves, and you see how the company’s data compares to the industry’s weighted averages.

Second, we look at operating cash flow multiples. Take the difference between the gold price and the cash cost to produce an ounce, multiply that by the company’s production per year, and you get operating cash flow. Divide that into its market capitalization and you get its operating cash flow multiple. We look at that this much the same as one looks at earnings per share multiples in other industries.

For reference, we last calculated the industry averages on December 29, 2008 for the 50+ gold miners we follow, which is everyone of significance. At that time, the average market cap for an ounce of production was $3,634, an ounce of proven and probable reserves was $194, and the average operating cash flow multiple on forecast 2009 production, assuming $900/oz gold, was 7.4X.

We focus companies that are below the averages and try to figure out why. An ounce of gold is an ounce of gold, it doesn’t matter who mined it. If you’re going to buy an ounce of gold from a coin dealer, you want to get the cheapest price. Well, if you’re going to buy an ounce of gold in the stock market, you should want to get those at the cheapest price, too. It’s oversimplified, as there are other factors to be considered, but this is a primary screening tool to determine which stocks merit further study. The method works, as the GSA Top 10 Stocks portfolio has outperformed every other gold investment vehicle since we began in 1994.

TGR: Are all the companies in your coverage producers or have 43-101’s??

JD: Yes, all are producing or near-producing. They may be in the money-raising stage to build a mine, but they’ve got an independently determined reserve. And that part of the market has done better than the explorers because it has more data to underpin the stocks’ prices.

TGR: And you focus in on having 10 just because, as you point out in your materials, it allows you to maximum upside at minimum risk (i.e., if one of the 10 goes down 50%, you will only lose 5% of your money). Is your portfolio always at 10 or does it ever expand more than that?

JD: No, earlier in 2008 we were 40% cash, so it was six stocks. For a couple of months later in 2008 it was 11 stocks. But 90% of the time it’s at 10.

TGR: What prompted you to be 40% in cash?

JD: That was when Bear Stearns was rescued in March and gold went to $1000; we were just uncomfortable with that whole scenario. And actually we put the 40% in the gold ETF; so it wasn’t true cash.

TGR: Okay. And as you’re looking at these undervalued companies, are you finding that there are certain qualifications? Are they typically in a certain area, certain size?

JD: While we follow Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX) and Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE:NEM) and they’ve both been Top 10 in the past, neither is now. We’re currently looking further down the food chain. There’s one with over two million ounces growing to four million a year. Another has a million growing to two million. So, some are still pretty good sized. And then there are others further down that are either developing mines or are very cheap on a market cap per ounce basis.

Earlier, one of the Top 10 was selling at its “cash in the bank” price. We’ve had a nice little rally since October and this stock has doubled, but it’s still cheap. It has 9 million ounces of reserves at three mine sites in European Community nations, and it’s not Gabriel in Romania. It has no major troubles with permitting its mines and it was selling at its cash/share. Then the chairman of the board bought 5 million more shares. It was already top 10, but I pointed this out to subscribers as great buy signal. It’s doubled since and will double again, in our opinion.

TGR: Can you share with us some of the ones that are in your top 10?

JD: Well, the astute investor would probably recognize Goldcorp (NYSE:GG) as the one at two million ounces growing to four million ounces. Their tremendous new mine in Mexico, Penasquito, which I have been to and written about, is going to average half a million ounces of gold and 30 million ounces of silver a year. It’s going to be the biggest producing silver mine in the world, momentarily anyway, and will produce huge quantities of lead and zinc. At current prices, it’s going to be a billion-dollar-a-year revenues mine, which is enormous. And because of by-products, and even at current prices, the 500,000 ounces of gold per year will be produced at a negative cash cost per ounce.

TGR: Wow. Because of the credits?

JD: Because of the by-product credits. Another one would be Yamana Gold Inc. (NYSE:AUY), which is growing from a million ounces to two million ounces. Both Yamana and Goldcorp are in politically safe areas—no Bolivia, no Ecuador, no Romania—none of the places where you have to take political risk. I think we’ve learned enough from the Crystallex International Corp. (KRY) and Gold Reserve Inc. (NYSE:GRZ) situation in Venezuela, where they’re both on portions of the same huge deposit that is probably 25 million ounces or more. It looks to me that the government is going to take it away from them. So, I would just as soon not be involved in that kind of political risk scenario. There’s enough risk in gold just from the mining aspects of it that you don’t have to take chances on the politics too, as in some nations that’s impossible to assess.

TGR: Yes, another one that is really doing quite well is Royal Gold Inc. (Nasdaq:RGLD). Can you speak about that company?

JD: Yes. Royal Gold has been GSA Top 10 for 18 months now. We put it on in part because of the Penasquito deposit that I mentioned earlier. Royal has a 2% royalty on that, and 2% of a billion dollars is $20 million a year. Royal is unique in that they haven’t prostituted themselves by selling shares on a continuous basis. They only have 34 million shares outstanding and they will have royalty income this year of about $100 million. Penasquito is just coming on line, so its $20 million per year won’t be fully seen until late 2010.

Plus Royal pays a dividend. I think it could pay $1.00/share ($0.32 now). Dividend-paying gold stocks typically trade at a 1% yield. A $1.00/share dividend would make Royal a potential $100 stock. That’s my crystal ball down-the-road target.

Royal is a great play on gold price because they don’t have the aggravation of mining. They have a portfolio of mine royalties, plus a small corporate office. Royal employs 16 people, has $150 million in the bank and over $100 million a year income, which is about $3.00 per share pre-tax. Their biggest cost is taxes.

TGR: I see also that Franco Nevada Corp. (FNV.TO) has had quite a rise, though they have been kind of tumultuous between November and December.

JD: Franco is also a stock we like. About half of its royalties are from oil, so that’s why it’s suffered. The original Franco Nevada, as you know, was merged into Newmont for five years, and then they came public again in December ’07. I think it’s a good way to play gold and oil, and I think everybody agrees that oil is not going to stay in the $40 range for long.

TGR: John, can you give us a few more?

JD: A couple of smaller ones we like are Northgate Minerals Corp. (AMEX:NXG) and Golden Star Resources Ltd. [TSX:GSC]. Northgate is a misunderstood producer. Everybody thinks it’s going out of business when the Kemess Mine closes after 2011, but it’s actually not. It has 200,000 ounces a year from two mines in Australia and has a potential new mine in Ontario where they’ve just announced a 43-101 with over three million ounces. That’s potentially another 200,000 ounces a year, so we think they’ll remain at 400,000 ounces a year from Canada and Australia, both of which are countries we like. Cheap on our market cap per ounce of production and reserves metrics, it’s trading at an operating cash flow multiple under 2.0X.

Golden Star has several nearby mines in Ghana with production targeted at about 500,000 ounces in 2009. They’ve been ramping up to this rate for the past year and cash costs have run much higher than plan. If costs can be controlled and production goals met, it’s a takeover candidate for someone already in the country, such as Newmont or Gold Fields Ltd. (NYSE:GFI).

One thing I think readers should bear in mind is that gold mining will be one of the few industries doing well in 2009. Their key cost is oil, which is about 25% of the cost of running a mine. Oil’s price, as we know, is down about 75% in the $147/barrel high last July. At the average $400 cash cost per ounce mine, that’s a cut of about $75/oz off their costs. That result alone is going to give them an uptick in future earnings versus what they showed for third quarter 2008.

Something else people may not recognize is that currencies are also falling; many are down 20% to 40% versus the U.S. dollar. All the commodity nation currencies—the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, the South African Rand, the Brazilian Real, the Mexican Peso—they’re all down 20% to 40%. When your mining costs in those countries are translated back into U.S. dollars, they’ll be 20% to 40% lower.

So, the miners are going to have falling cash costs and even if the gold price remains exactly where it is now profits are going to soar. This will be unique in 2009. I can’t think of any other industry in which people are going to be able to point to and say, “These guys are making a lot more money.” I think the increasing profits will get the gold mining industry recognition that it isn’t getting now. Of course I’m a bull on gold because of the macroeconomic picture. When you put falling costs of production together with a rising gold price, you’ve got a winning combination for the stocks in 2009.

JD: Well, Silver Wheaton is another royalty company; it’s not a producer. It gets its profit royalties by paying a cash sum up front and $4/ounce on an ongoing basis. It captures the difference between the silver price and $4 an ounce; if silver is $10 and it pays $4, it makes a $6 an ounce profit; at $20 silver, its profit would be $16. Aside from no pure silver miner actually producing ounces as low as $4.00, there’s a lot of leverage to silver price. I am not a silver bull, but because I’m a gold bull I think silver will follow gold higher.

Silver Wheaton is one of those companies that doesn’t have the issues of actually doing the mining. It has a portfolio of mines that it gets production from, and it owns 25% of the production from Goldcorp’s Penasquito mine that it buys at $4 an ounce, and will average about 8 million ounces a year. It’s just starting up now, but it will really get going in 2010. Silver Wheaton’s share of the total mineralization at Penasquito is 1 billion ounces. There’s 4 billion total ounces of silver there and it bought 25%. So, for a long time—the mine life of Penasquito is over 30 years—it’s going to be a big producing mine for Silver Wheaton.

TGR: Isn’t there a twin sister to Silver Wheaton in the gold area?

JD: Well, there’s Gold Wheaton Gold Corp. [TSX.V:GLW]. It’s based on the premise that some companies have a gold by-product. With their primary production in some other kind of metal, some might like to lay off the gold for a $400 an ounce on-going payment and an up-front purchase amount. Yes, some of the same guys are involved. I’m not convinced it’s going to do as well because it’s already got a lot of shares outstanding, and I just don’t like the capital structure as much. I wouldn’t bet against these guys but I’m not a believer.

TGR: And you said you’re not a silver bull. Why is that?

JD: We do cover about 15 silver miners, but reason number one for not being a bull is that it’s a by-product. Few mines are built to get just silver; 70% to 80% of silver comes as a by-product to copper, zinc, gold or some other metal. If you’re producing copper, you’re more interested in the copper price than you are in the silver price and you tend to just dump the silver onto the market.

And second, it’s not a monetary commodity. It is poor man’s gold—but it doesn’t have the universal monetary acceptance that gold does. It has a growing list of industrial uses, but it’s not growing at any rate that’s going to offset the falling use in photography. So, the overall demand for silver is not growing at any great rate. It’s not going to go from 800 million ounces a year to 1.6 billion ounces a year; it may get there in 20 years or 30 years, but that’s not our investment time horizon.

I think silver just follows gold along; but, in fact, it hasn’t been following gold along because right now silver is trading at a discount to gold. The ratio of gold to silver price, which normally runs around 50–55, is now around 80, so silver might have a little bit of a pop-up if the discount closes. But there are a lot of new silver mines coming on line and maybe that’s why the discount exists. Penasquito is one and Silver Standard Resources Inc. (Nasdaq:SSRI) has a big one starting in 2009. Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. (NYSE:CDE) has now one ramping up and Apex Silver Mines Ltd. (AMEX:SIL) San Cristobal is now on line at 20+ million ounces per year as a zinc by-product. There’s potentially more silver coming to market than the world really needs. We do recommend Silver Wheaton, but that’s our single play.

JD: Well, you know, it’s in the uncertainty phase as to whether or not the new Delores mine in Mexico is going to work. Now built, it’s just starting up. We like the stock as we think it’s going to work. The question is: will it? Two mines in the area—Mulatos, owned by Alamos Gold Inc. [TSX:AGI], and Ocampo owned by Gammon Gold Inc. (GRS) did not start up smoothly. The market is betting against Delores starting smoothly, but this is the last of the three mines to come on line, and the first two mines—Alamos’ and Gammon’s—did get fixed and are now running okay. So, I think Minefinders has probably learned from the experience of the others, and the mine should start up all right. But, you know, the proof will be in the pudding. If you take its market cap per ounce on the forecast 185,000 ounces of production in 2009, or its almost 5 million ounces of reserves, and compare it to the industry averages we calculate, it’s potentially a double or triple from here.

TGR: So, the start-up issues of the other two mines, were they politically related?

JD: No, it was metal related. Processing facilities aren’t like televisions; you don’t just turn them on. It’s more like buying a new fancy computer system that needs to be twiddled and tweaked and loaded with the right programs. And you know, all geology is different, so things seldom start up properly; and, given the long teething problems at the other two mines, that’s sort of been a curse. If Minefinders can beat it and start up on plan, it’s an easy winner in 2009.

TGR: So, John do you have a prediction on where you think gold will go in ‘09?

JD: People talk about $2,000 or $5,000—it’s all pie in the sky, you know. Gold might get there; but the bigger question is: what’s the timeframe? Will I be around when gold is $5,000? I doubt it. Will it get there? Probably.

But we look for undervalued situations no matter what the gold price. And in the ‘90s—you know we’ve been writing Gold Stock Analyst since 1994—in the mid-90s gold did nothing for three years, it traded between $350 and $400. With our methods of selecting undervalued stocks, we had a couple of years of the Top 10 portfolio up 60% and 70% but gold was flat. Until mid-2008 the GSA Top 10 was up almost 800% in the current gold bull market. When gold does go up, the stocks go up more; but, in general, even if gold does nothing, we can still find good buys. Royal Gold is an example of finding winners in a tough market. Made a Top 10 stock at $23 in mid-2007, it gained 60% in 2008 and has doubled over the past 18 months.

We don’t follow the explorers, in part because there is no data to analyze beyond drill hole results, which are a long way from showing a mine can be built and operated at a profit. For us, the pure explorers are too much like lottery tickets. The producers do exploration and you can get your discovery upside from them. Bema Gold (acquired by Kinross Gold in February 2007) was a Top 10 stock with 100,000 ounces per year of production when it found Cerro Casale and it did very nicely on the back of that find. So, with the smaller producers you can get plenty of exploration upside. You don’t need to focus on the greenfield explorers because it’s just too hard to tell who’s going to win and who’s going to lose.

John Doody brings a unique perspective to gold stock analysis. With a BA in Economics from Columbia and an MBA in Finance from Boston University, where he also did his Ph.D.-Economics course work, Doody has no formal “rock” studies beyond “Introductory Geology” at Columbia University’s School of Mines.

An Economics Professor for almost two decades, Doody became interested in gold due to an innate distrust of politicians. In order to serve those that elected them, politicians always try to get nine slices out of an eight slice pizza. How do they do this? They debase the currency via inflationary economic policies.

Success with his method of finding undervalued gold mining stocks led Doody to leave teaching and start the Gold Stock Analyst newsletter late in 1994. The newsletter covers only producers or near-producers that have an independent feasibility study validating their their reserves are economical to produce.

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***All Posts are not to be considered Investment Advice, the articles/posts are presented for Informational Purposes. Consult Your Own Investment Advisors and Carefully Research and Read the Prospectus’s before making any Investment.*** jschulmannsr

As Always Bringing You The Must Have Information for Today’s Gold Markets and Hard Assets Investing- Dare Something Worthy Today Too! Brought To You By:- jschulmansr

There is another option, however, which involves debt holders taking a share of the losses. If steps are not taken to ensure that this happens, the greatest heist in history will have occurred: at least $1 trillion will be transferred from taxpayers to debt holders of failed financial institutions.This must not be allowed to happen.

Mark-to-Market vs. Real Losses

To understand the government’s dilemma, one must realize that the great majority of the not-yet-recognized losses in our financial system are not short-term, mark-to-market losses that will someday be reversed, but permanent losses. This is a huge misunderstanding that many people, especially those in Washington, seem to be suffering from.

To understand why the losses are real, consider this simple example: imagine a bank that lent someone $750,000 via an Option ARM mortgage to buy a McMansion in California at the peak of the bubble less than two years ago.Virtually all homeowners with this type of loan will default, thanks to declining home prices, the structure of the loan, and the fact that 70-80% of Option ARMs were liar’s loans.If we assume the house is only worth $400,000 today, then there’s been an actual loss of $350,000. That money will never be recovered. If one considers the millions of toxic loans made during the bubble – subprime, Alt-A, Option ARM and second mortgages, home equity lines of credit, commercial real estate, leveraged loans, credit cards, etc. – it easily adds up to at least $1 trillion in additional, unrecognized very real losses.

Imagine that New RTC buys this loan for $400,000.In this case, it might not lose money, but then the bank (or the structured finance pool) holding the loan has to immediately realize the loss of $350,000 – and it is certain that the U.S. (and world) financial system has not even come close to marking these assets to what they’re really worth, which explains why they won’t lend, even when given new money. Thus, if New RTC buys these assets at fair value, then the financial institutions suffer the losses – but this would bankrupt many of them.Yet if New RTC pays the inflated prices they’re marked at today, then it (and taxpayers) will suffer huge losses.

Who Should Bear the Losses?

To save our financial system, somebody’s going to have bear these losses – the only question is, who? Some fraction of this will certainly have to be taxpayer money, but all of it needn’t be if the government would stop bailing out all of the debt holders.

Government policy has been all over the map.Among the large financial institutions that have run into trouble (in chronological order, Bear Stearns, IndyMac, Fannie & Freddie, Lehman, AIG, WaMu, Citigroup and Bank of America), in some cases the equity was somewhat protected, while in others was wiped out, and likewise with the debt.Most likely due to the chaos that ensued after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, the current policy, as reflected in the most recent cases of Citi and BofA, is to at least partially protect the shareholders and, incredibly, 100% protect all debt holders, even junior/unsecured/subordinated debt holders.

The result is at least a $1 trillion transfer of wealth from taxpayers to debt holders. This makes no sense from a financial, fairness or moral hazard perspective.While there’s an argument that the government should protect senior debt holders to preserve confidence in the system (even though they knowingly took risk – after all, they could have bought Treasuries), the junior debt holders got paid even higher interest in exchange for knowingly taking even more risk by being subordinate in the capital structure (of course, equity and preferred equity holders are the most junior). These investors made bad decisions, buying junior positions in highly leveraged companies that made bad decisions, so why should they be protected?

Moreover, the reckless behavior of debt investors was a major contributor to the bubble.It was low-cost debt with virtually no strings attached that allowed borrowers, especially the world’s major financial institutions, to become massively overleveraged, fueling the greatest asset bubble in history.This was not an equity bubble – unlike the internet bubble, for example, stock market valuations never got crazy – it was a debt bubble, so it would be particularly perverse and ironic if government bailouts allowed equity holders to take a beating, yet fully protected debt holders.

Case Study: Bank of America

Let’s look at Bank of America (BAC), which effectively went bankrupt last week (disclosure: we are short the stock). The cost to taxpayers of avoiding this outcome wasn’t the headline $20 billion, but far more – the government is going to take a bath on the $120 billion that it guaranteed – and it’s likely that this is just the beginning of the losses.

Consider this: as of the end of 2008, BofA had $1.82 trillion in assets ($1.72 trillion excluding goodwill and intangibles), supported by a mere $86.6 billion in tangible equity – 5.0% of tangible assets or 20:1 leverage – and $48.9 billion of tangible common equity – 2.8% of tangible assets or 35:1 leverage (common equity excludes the TARP injection of capital in the form of preferred stock, which has characteristics of both debt and equity).(All data from BofA’s earnings release on 1/16/09; note that these figures include Countrywide, but not Merrill Lynch)

At such leverage levels, it only takes tiny losses to plunge a company into insolvency.It’s impossible to know with precision what BofA’s ultimate losses will be, but among the company’s loans are many in areas of great stress including $342.8 billion of commercial loans ($6.5 billion of which is nonperforming, up from $2.2 billion a year earlier), $253.5 billion of residential mortgages ($7.0 billion of which is nonperforming, up from $2.0 billion a year earlier), $152.5 billion of home equity loans (HELOCs; about $33 billion of which were Countrywide’s), and $18.2 billion of Option ARMs (on top of the $253.5 billion of residential mortgages; all of which were from Countrywide, which reported that as of June 30, 2008, 72% were negatively amortizing and 83% had been underwritten with low or no doc).

BofA is acknowledging a significant increase in losses, but its reserving has actually become more aggressive over the past year.From the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, nonperforming assets more than tripled from $5.9 billion to $18.2 billion, yet the allowance for credit losses didn’t even double, from $12.1 billion to $23.5 billion.As a result, the allowance for loan and lease losses as a percentage of total nonperforming loans and leases declined from 207% to 141%.

So BofA had big problems on its own and then made two very ill-advised acquisitions, the result of which effectively wiped out the company, causing the government to come in and bail it out, at a huge cost to taxpayers.So what price is being paid? NONE! The architect of this debacle, Ken Lewis, is still in place, as is the board that approved everything he did. Ditto with Citi. These banks are just getting do-overs, with the management, boards and debt holders not being touched – the only losers are the common shareholders (to some extent) and taxpayers (to a huge extent).

Since big losses from Merrill Lynch triggered last week’s bailout of BofA, why are all of its debt holders ($5.3 billion of junior subordinated notes, $31.2 billion of short-term debt and $206.6 billion of long-term debt) being protected 100%, while taxpayers are taking a bath eating Merrill’s losses from its reckless, greedy behavior?! This is madness.

A Better Solution

So what’s a better solution? I’m not arguing that BofA (or Citi or WaMu or Fannie or Freddie or AIG or Bear) should have been allowed to go bankrupt – we all saw the chaos that ensued when Lehman went bankrupt. Rather, if a company blows up (and can’t find a buyer), the following things should happen:

1) The government seizes it and puts it into conservatorship (as Fannie, Freddie, IndyMac and AIG effectively were, to one degree or another);

2) Equity is wiped out (again, as with Fannie, Freddie, IndyMac and AIG);

3) However, unlike Fannie, Freddie, IndyMac and AIG (and certainly Citi and BofA), everything in the capital structure except maybe the senior debt is at risk and absorbs losses as they are realized; the government would only provide a backstop above a certain level. This is what happened in the RTC bailout;

4) Over time, in conservatorship, while the businesses continue to operate (no mass layoffs, distressed sales, etc.), the government disposes of the companies in a variety of ways (just as the RTC did via runoff, selling the entire company or piece-by-piece, etc.), depending on the circumstances (as it’s doing with AIG and IndyMac, for example – these are good examples, except that the debt holders were protected).

Counter-Arguments

One counter-argument to my proposal is that we don’t want the government to nationalize banks.I don’t like it either, but the alternative – inject hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money and not take control – is even less palatable.There should certainly be urgency in disposing of the companies, but also the recognition that it could take years, as with the RTC.

Another counter-argument is Lehman: nobody wants a repeat of the chaos that ensued when the company went under and debt holders were wiped out. But the mistake here wasn’t the failure to protect the debt, but rather allowing the company to go bankrupt, which not only impacted Lehman’s equity and debt holders, but also stiffed Lehman’s countless clients and counterparties. It’s the latter that caused the true chaos.Lehman should have been seized and put into conservatorship, so that all of Lehman’s clients and counterparties could have relied on Lehman (as was done with AIG) – but debt holders would have taken losses as they were realized (which is not being done with AIG).

A final argument for protecting the debt is the fear of contagion effects: for example, other financial institutions who own the debt might become insolvent (this was probably why Fannie and Freddie subdebt was saved). Also, debt markets might freeze up such that even currently healthy banks might not be able to access debt and collapse.

Regarding the former, the debt is owned by a wide range of institutions all over the world: sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and, to be sure, other banks.Some of them would no doubt be hurt if they take losses on the debt they hold in troubled financial institutions – but that’s no reason to protect all of them 100% with taxpayer money.

As for the latter concern that debt markets might freeze up, causing even healthy banks to collapse, it’s important to understand that right now there is no junior debt available to any financial institution with even a hint of weakness – there’s very high cost equity and government-guaranteed debt.Neither of these will be affected if legacy debt holders are forced to bear some of the cost of the failure of certain institutions.

Conclusion

The new Obama administration needs to understand that the greatest heist in history is underway – at least $1 trillion is being transferred from taxpayers to debt holders of failed financial institutions – and take steps to stop it before taxpayers suffer further unnecessary losses.

My Note- Today I present an interesting article about the Geo-Political ramifications of the Battle for the Caspian Seas, plus some of the latest Gold News. Gold today is making a much needed correction in prices, if Gold can hold here and/or we have any increase in tensions of the Middle East; I think the next leg will take prices into the $900-$950 range.- jschulmansr

I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book authored by Lutz Kleveman entitled The New Great Game. The book is about Kleveman’s visits to all countries surrounding the Caspian Sea and to the countries involved in actual and proposed oil and gas pipeline routes required to bring Caspian Sea energy assets to the world market. He interviews an amazing cast of intriguing characters along the way.

The investigative journalist delves deeply into the geopolitical implications of world powers struggling to control Caspian Sea energy reserves – some of the largest remaining oil and gas fields in the world. It is fitting the game of chess was invented by the Persians. It is worth purchasing The New Great Game just to gaze at the maps on the inside and backside covers…each central Asian country being ruled by a government or dictator who one minute moves diagonally like a bishop, only years later to morph into a rook and move horizontally and vertically like a knight, and every once in awhile going hay-wire and imitating the unorthodox movement of a knight. Who will win the great game? What will OPEC’s response be to non-OPEC oil production in the Caspian Sea region? How will China and Russia respond to American military might in the region? Only time will tell.

The map below shows the countries surrounding the Caspian Sea which are Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan.

Most people are fairly familiar with the oil history of Baku, Azerbaijan dating back to Russian oil discovery and production in the early 1870s. Kleveman relates an interesting story of Swede Robert Nobel who was the older brother of factory owners Ludwig and Alfred Nobel who had become very wealthy producing arms and dynamite. Robert had been sent to Baku with 25,000 rubles to purchase Russian walnut to make rifle butts. Instead, he caught Baku oil fever and bought a small refinery. After only a few years, the Nobel Brothers Petroleum Producing Company vaulted over Rockefeller’s Standard Oil as the largest oil producer in the world. Later, the Nobel’s invented the first oil tanker in a story well told in Daniel Yergin’s The Prize, for which, ironically, Yergin won the Nobel Prize for non-fiction literature in 1992. And yes, the prize is named after the same Nobel family as those men seeking walnut wood for rifle butts in Azerbaijan.

Fast forward to today: Baku Azeri oil is being shipped to the Mediterranean Sea and world markets via the so-called BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline. The picture below shows the pipeline’s route from Baku, Azerbaijan through Tbilisi Georgia, and finally to the Mediterranean Turkish port of Ceyhan.

This pipeline was hailed as the “Contract of the Century” by Azeri officials very much interested in getting their oil to market independent of Iranian and Russian involvement. Of course, the US was more than mildly interested in this solution as well. The pipeline is owned by a consortium of energy companies, among them:

The big question in today’s energy riddle is how to route the large energy assets of the Caspian Sea to the world market and thereby offer America an alternative to OPEC supplies. Take the giant Tengiz oil field, discovered of the coast of Kazakhstan, as an example. Estimated at up to 24 billion barrels of oil Tengiz is the sixth largest oil field in the world. It is one of the largest oil discoveries in recent history. The Tengizchevroil (TCO) joint venture has developed the field since the early 1990’s. The partners are:

Chevron has predicted that Tengiz could potentially produce up to 700,000 barrels of oil per day by 2010. The field also contains large reserves of natural gas. On the downside, the oil is very high in sulfur content, once reason western technology was so desperately required. Currently the oil from the Tengiz field is piped from Kazakhstan through Russia to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk via the CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium). The BTC pipeline is a competing option, preferred by the US to bypass Russia, but is expensive: the oil must first be tanked across the Caspian Sea from Tengiz to Baku, and then offloaded into the BTC pipeline infrastructure. French energy giant Total is interested in developing a common sense alternative pipeline through Iran which everyone knows is obviously the most economically viable solution, withstanding the geopolitical climate in Iran. Of course the US does not favor this route at all.

The US’s long favored route for Caspian Sea energy was first suggested and studied by Unocal (now part of Chevron). This countries involved in this route are highlighted in color in the picture below.

This so-called Central Asian pipeline was to begin with a natural gas pipeline from huge Turkmenistan gas fields through western Afghanistan to the Pakistani deep water port of Gwadar on the Gulf of Oman (Indian Ocean). The natural gas pipeline was to be followed by an oil pipeline along the same route, serving not only the energy starved countries of Pakistan and India, but the world energy markets as well. The US believes this route, bypassing Russia and Iran, as well as the congested Straits of Hormuz, is in the strategic interest of the US as a secure non-OPEC source of oil.

But the key word in the last sentence was “secure”. Unilateral policy decisions by the US in Iraq and elsewhere have instigated a tide of central Asian anti-American resentment. The Taliban, once supported and funded by the US, are now in control of the pipeline’s route. The pipeline project has been delayed until “control” and “security” has been established. Anti-American opposition in Pakistan is also a problem, regardless of that countries dire need for the energy and potential income the pipeline could deliver.

The US’s oil centric foreign policy agenda is apparently to irritate the two major powers in the Caspian Sea region: Russia and Iran. With the USSR’s disintegration in 1991, all the former Soviet states in the region were being eyed for their energy reserves. At the same time, Russia still considers these former states as within their “sphere of influence”.

Instead of joining with the Russians in mutually beneficial energy projects, technology transfers, and contracts, the US instead decided to take the opposite approach: it first propped up a government in Georgia irritating the Russians. Then the US supported NATO membership for former USSR countries Ukraine and Georgia. The US also proposed missile defense systems on Russia’s western borders, further infuriating the Russians. Russia finally had enough and acted in Georgia as George Bush was attending the Olympics in China. Russian actions put exclamation points on the obvious – it can take out the BTC pipeline any time it wants, and is resentful of American military meddling in its backyard.

The prior secret agreements between Putin and Bush to fight the mutual “terrorists” foes appear to be in the distant past. Recent activities involving Russian natural gas transports through Ukraine underscore the vulnerability of Europe’s energy supplies. Europe currently imports some 40% of its natural gas from Russia, and this amount is bound to increase in the future. This further complicates the puzzle by placing US actions at odds with supposed allies in Europe.

With respect to Iran, the US has military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere in the region – completely surrounding Iran. The US has further tried to isolate Iran (to the dismay of the Europeans who vitally need Iranian energy) by imposing economic sanctions on the country. Iran was one of three countries with distinguished membership in George Bush’s “Axis of Evil”. These US actions have left the Iranians no choice but to develop nuclear weapons in order to protect themselves against the same kind of American aggression they have witnessed elsewhere in the region.

Meantime, flawed US/Israeli policy, combined with Israel’s recent activities in the Gaza strip and the powerful Jewish lobbying efforts in the US for military action in Iran, seem to increase the odds for more conflict in the region.

Have US foreign policy moves in Central Asia been successful? Yes and no.

One bright spot is Iraq. Iraq was always the priority in “the war on terror”, not because the terrorists were there (they are now…) but because Iraq holds the world’s second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Many of Iraq’s oil fields also have the important advantages of being sweet crude (high quality), are shallow, and are under pressure, making Iraqi production costs very low – in the neighborhood of $10/barrel. For those who actually believe the US government’s marketing job of WMDs, “freedom”, etc. as a pretext for invading Iraq, please note the recent announced that Iraq’s oil resources are now “open for business” and up for bidding. Western oil companies such as BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) stand to benefit handsomely in Iraq while at the same time boosting the country’s oil production by some 2-3 million barrels over the new few year. So, Iraq can be considered a US success story assuming security is maintained and the oil can reach the market. A big if, but time will tell.

The BTC can also be considered a success. It has operated fairly reliably, and has shown to be a fairly secure source of Caspian Sea oil. This was a huge project, and many people in the oil business doubted its success and completion. But it’s up and running today and survived Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia. That said, the BTC’s continued success is extremely dependent on maintaining security in the area.

Now it’s time to head to Afghanistan and take care of business over there. Boy-oh-boy is that going to be one tough nut to crack. The Afghan/Pakistani issue is so deep I can’t even begin to cover it in enough detail to do the subject justice. Those who believe the US motives in Afghanistan are simply “terrorism” or “freedom” should take note that the US fully supported and funded the Taliban when it was decided they were the best option with respect to getting the Central Asian pipeline built. Unocal sponsored the Taliban on trips to Houston to stay at 5-star hotels and visits to NASA. It was only later when the Taliban wouldn’t “play ball” that the US stopped their support and labeled the Taliban terrorists. Even the US installed Afghani President Hamid Karzai worked as an advisor and consultant to Unocal during the initial Central Asian pipeline feasibility studies.

So, US policies have had some successes in the region as far as oil is concerned. From a humanitarian aspect, well, I’ll leave that up to the reader to figure out on his or her own. From an economic standpoint, one would have to make a detailed analysis of military spending versus the economic benefits in order to come to any conclusions. Perhaps I will write an article on this some day, but for now, I’ll sidestep that question as well.

For the US, I am not such an idealist to think for one minute the symbiotic “Pentagon-Petroleum” relationship will change anytime soon. Further, as a realist, I also understand how important the game being played in Central Asia is. I am aware of the actions the US and other world powers are taking in Central Asia in order to acquire the energy reserves they need to power their economies. My eyes are wide open.

What I continue to struggle with is why the US directs so many resources and dollars toward these overseas strategies while at the same time almost completely ignoring what steps could be taken to reduce our foreign oil requirements by adopting some fairly simple and obvious policy changes. It, quite simply baffles me. Even a cock-sure trader hedges his bets now and again. The most amateur investor knows some diversification is prudent. So, why does the US continue oil centric policies which are certain to lead to more conflict, more debt, more trade deficits, and a weaker economy and currency?

Most readers are very familiar with my proposed energy policy, but I will add the link yet again in the hopes that someday, someone out there with a bit of power and influence will read it and make it happen.

So what does all this have to do with investing you ask? In a word: everything. Where can US investors put their money these days? Financials? Consumer cyclicals? Auto makers? I think not. Despite current low oil prices, the recent strength in the US dollar, and the subject matter of this article, I continue to believe the best opportunity for US investors is to participate in energy companies and to buy gold. Now, I know that some of you who read my articles earlier in the year and went out and bought my recommended stocks got a hurt, and hurt bad, right along with me and everyone else. I’m truly sorry, and feel bad if my advice caused you any pain (at least realize I felt the pain as well!). That said, let’s look at the 2008 returns for some of my picks:

Not awfully bad, considering these returns (from this weekend’s WSJ) do not include the nice dividends some of these companies’ payout and the S&P500 was down 38.5% in 2008, its worst year since 1931. At the same time gold held up rather well, gaining 7% in the course of the year.

The bad news was some of my theme picks didn’t do well at all. Energy services, which at one point in 2008 were my “number one investment pick”, simply got hammered. Likewise, my advice to get into strategic metals via Vanguard Precious Metals (VGPMX) was a disaster as the stocks in this fund were sold off big time during the great leverage unwinding.

Making matters worse was the huge distribution VGPMX made at the end of the year which just infuriated me. I actually called Vanguard and asked them how a fund which lost over 60% for the year could possibly justify making a year end taxable distribution that equaled roughly 12% of the fund’s entire NAV?! I mean, if you sold enough to make such huge gains, why the hell is the fund down 60%? If you didn’t sell, and watched the stocks go down, why not sell the losers so that the losers and gainers cancel each other out so that no taxable distribution takes place? I was told I simply “didn’t understand”. They were right, I don’t! Seems to me even a moron could manage a fund better than that. The loss in the fund’s NAV I can understand. The huge year end distribution is simply inexcusable.

What I learned during the year is this: if a person wants to invest in precious metals, buy gold, take personal delivery of it, and bury it in the backyard and forget about it. Sure, people flock to the US dollar in times of crisis, but did anyone see the action in US treasuries last Thursday and Friday, as well as the headline in Barron’s this weekend? The financial mismanagement by the US government, Treasury, and Federal Reserve combined with the lack of a strategic long-term comprehensive energy policy must lead to a long-term weakening of the US currency. So, buy oil, buy gold. When inflation comes back, it will come back very quickly and these hard assets will once again take off like a rocket. I mean, how can the economy not re-inflate with the Federal Reserve printing US dollars as fast as the presses will print them?

My picks for 2009 are as follows: XOM, BP, CVX, COP, SLB and gold bullion, in particular American Eagles and Canadian Maple Leafs.

Goodbye 2008! Indeed, very soon we will be saying goodbye to George W. Bush as well. Let’s all hope that 2009 will be better than 2008. It won’t take much! Let’s also hope that the new administration hedges its foreign policies bets with a bet on the American people and what we can do at home by enacting a strategic long-term comprehensive energy policy. In the meantime, buy Kleveman’s book The New Great Game, enjoy, and learn. The last paragraph of the book sums up my feelings perfectly.

I like gold here as an investment going forward- I just liked it a whole lot better a few weeks ago. I think we at the top of this wedge formation and due for a pullback and the RSI could come back to the previous high around 50. That would be very constructive and bullish allowing this metal to bust through 900 on its next run. While I don’t have a specific price target for where I think it will correct to, the 20-day moving average seems like a reasonable guess.

Obviously if tensions heat up in the Middle East this could fuel another rise in gold and all bets are off. However I’ve learned in the past not to underestimate gold’s ability to correct quickly so I took my profits on Friday and will enter on a pullback. I wanted to be flat going into next week as anything can happen when all the fund managers get back from vacation.

Silver has been up 6 straight days and is fast approaching resistance. I would rather it pause here and gather some strength to possibly break through the 11.75 area instead of shooting straight up using up all it’s firepower. Use any further strength to unload positions and wait for a pullback to add or establish new positions.

Nevertheless, the response has been unprecedented in its own merit. Government debt held by the public was $5.51 trillion when September began; by the end of 2008, it had risen to $6.37 trillion. The more than $1 trillion expansion in Treasury borrowing surely partially serves to offset the $438 billion budget deficit. But what about the additional half a trillion dollars?

On September 17, the Treasury announced the creation of the the “Supplementary Financing Account” in the Federal Reserve. This is a capital reserve in Fed financed by the Treasury selling new debt and it greatly expands the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, albeit stealthily. The excess capital is trapped in this Fed account and does not reach currency in circulation. As of January 2, $259 billion is in this Treasury-financed cash pool and counting the Treasury’s “General Account” with the Fed, there is a total of $365 billion sitting at the Fed. The capital itself is money borrowed by the public, so its immediate net effect is deflationary.

On top of that, the Fed in an unprecedented gesture has started incentivizing excess bank reserve deposits by issuing interest on these holdings. Rather than being lent out, liquidity provided to banks by the Fed is thus trapped as it earns interest deposited at the Fed. The Fed is essentially issuing debt, and banks are engaging in what amounts to be a dollar-based Fed vs. interbank carry trade. Banks borrow money from the Fed, deposit them back into the Fed (use borrowed dollars to purchase Fed debt), and profit from the differential between the fed funds and overnight rates (profit off of the difference between the interest rates offered by Federal Reserve and other banks).

Less than $40 billion a year ago, the excess reserve deposits held by the Federal Reserve has ballooned to $860 billion. The banks can also deposit printed money into a Fed category called “Deposits with Federal Reserve Banks, other than reserve balances,” which is what the Supplementary Financing and General Accounts also fall under.

The “Other” subsection of these deposit accounts, which can be construed to represent bank deposits, has increased from $281 million in September to $15 billion today. Both the reserve and non-reserve deposits comprise another huge pool of excess liquidity on the Fed’s balance sheet that doesn’t immediately affect circulated currency.

Another Fed-induced cash trap has been in the form of increased reverse repurchase agreements, which are up to $88 billion. Reverse repurchase agreements are the offering of collateral in exchange for a cash loan. The Fed has utilized reverse repurchase agreements in its liquification of banks. It buys off toxic defaulting assets in exchange for cash and immediately reclaims the cash by selling the banks T-bills. The Fed printed money to pay for these T-bills, so there is excess liquidity that is trapped in time-sensitive debt. But why would the Fed be taking liquidity away from the system?

The Fed’s balance sheet suggests it has been cranking the printing presses like mad. Fed liabilities have expanded to $2.26 trillion, up over 140% since September. However, currency in circulation is up only 7% in that same time period. Where is this “trapped” $1.37 trillion? The answer is the Fed has confined it into temporary cash pools, whether in the Supplementary Financing Account or excess reserve deposits or in time-sensitive T-bills. The Federal Reserve seems to be sequestering all of this cash to buy time for the Treasury to finish its funding activities. What is scary is this wave of future bailout funding is probably not even close to what will be needed for Obama’s infrastructure and stimulus spending, which will be comparable only to FDR’s and will be liquidity injected directly into the economy.

But who is going to keep funding this expansion Treasury debt issuance? The American public is broke and cannot offer its capital in return for terrible yields. Foreign nations don’t have the means or will to continue financing our debt. Commodity prices have collapsed, cutting deeply into foreigners’ export revenues. Oil is down from highs around $150/barrel this past summer to around $40/barrel now.

According to the CIA World Factbook, China has a $6 billion budget surplus. However, it announced a $585 billion economic stimulus package in early November to be invested by the end of 2010. The Chinese government agreed to provide only $170 billion of the the funds, in an effort to prevent an unreconcilable deficit. How will China raise the other $415 billion for continuous use until the end of 2010? Surely, local governments and private banks and businesses can’t finance such a large package in the midst of a historic recession.

The only reserve China can tap into to finance its stimulus package is its $1.9 trillion foreign exchange reserves, $585 billion of which is in US Treasury securities. Also, according to the Guangzhou Daily, in mid November, the People’s Bank of China began an effort to increase its gold reserves from 600 tons to 4500 tons to diversify risk held by its huge dollar debt reserves. Financing its stimulus package and gold purchases would require selling Treasury securities, but becoming a net seller of US debt could have disastrous economic, political, and even militaristic consequences for China, so it will be interesting to see how events unfold. What seems for certain, however, is that China can no longer purchase more American debt to finance the US Treasury (and consequently the Fed).

This is a problem echoed by the rest of the big creditor nations. After China, the biggest holders of American debt securities are Japan, the UK, Caribbean banking centers, and OPEC nations. Japan is facing enormous headwinds as its quality-focused exports are suffering massive demand destruction as its consumers abroad lose wealth at epic proportions in the economic crisis. Japan was a net seller of US Treasuries in 2008 and with the current wealth destruction, it is highly unlikely it will switch to a net buyer of American debt. The British demand for American debt represented Middle Eastern oil-financed investment, but with oil prices collapsing, it will be next to impossible for this proxy demand from the UK to rise and finance additional debt.

The demand for US debt by Caribbean banking centers is because of their tax laws and because of the dollar’s status as the international reserve currency. As the credit crunch leads to liquidity destruction in Caribbean banks and the dollar slowly loses its reserve status, these tax haven banking centers will no longer be able to buy additional US debt. OPEC nations’ US debt demand, similar to the UK’s, is tied to Middle Eastern oil revenues financing American consumption (of their oil exports). As oil prices tank, as will OPEC nations’ economies and they too will have no wealth to buy up more American debt.

Bernie Madoff is well-recognized as the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, at $50 billion. I beg to differ with that claim. The United States has financed debt with debt since the late 80s, when its external debt/GDP broke the 0 mark. Since then, it has risen to over 100% of its GDP (which in itself is quite artificially inflated because of manipulated hedonics-adjusted inflation figures), and now stands at $13 trillion. That is what’s called a debt bubble. Bernie who?

But the debt bubble appears ready to collapse. The literal pyramid scheme is finally running out of investors, and many Treasury ETFs (like SHY, TLT, IEF, and IEI) are showing classic parabolic topping patterns and the next few weeks should confirm or deny my suspicions. Interest rates are at an obvious floor at zero, so there is nowhere to go but up. That means bond prices have nowhere to go but down, and the way bubbles burst, the falling prices will cascade into more selling until the debt bubble deflates and all the spending is financed by quantitative easing. The minute the Treasury finishes its current funding activity, the debt bubble will begin its collapse. Judging by gold backwardation (discussed later) and the bearish charts on the bubbly debt ETFs, I think the debt monetization and dollar devaluation will begin within the next six weeks.

With an insolvent public and no foreign demand for Treasuries, the Federal Reserve will monetize debt to finance its continued bailouts and economic stimulus. This is purely created capital pumped right into the system. This is not anything new for the Fed– for the past two decades, it has kept interest rates artificially low and created massive artificial wealth in the form of malinvestment and debt-financing. In the past, the Fed has been able to funnel the inflationary effects of its expansionary monetary policy into equity values with its low rates, which discourage saving, causing bubble after bubble, in the form of techs, real estate, and commodities. The excess liquidity (the artificial capital lent and spent because of low interest rates and debt financing) was soaked up by the stock market, which gave the appearance of economic growth and production. With inflation being funneled into equity and real estate over the last two decades, illusionary wealth was created and the public remained oblivious to the inflationary risk and the much lower real returns than nominal.

Now that the “artificial wealth bubble” being inflated for the past two decades is finally collapsing, one of two scenarios can occur: capital destruction or purchasing power destruction. Capital destruction occurs when the monetary supply decreases as individuals and institutions sell assets to pay off debts and defaults and savings starts growing at the expense of consumption. This is deflation and the public immediately sees and feels its effect, as checking accounts, equity funds, and wages start declining. Deflation serves no benefit to the Federal Reserve, as declining prices spur positive-feedback panic selling and bank runs, and debt repayments in nominal terms under deflation cause real losses.

Purchasing power destruction is much more desirable by the Fed. Its effects are “hidden” to a certain extent, as the public doesn’t see any nominal losses and only feels wealth destruction in unmanageable price inflation. It breeds perceptions of illusionary strength rather than deflation’s exaggerated weakness. The typical taxpayer will panic when his or her mutual fund goes down 20% but will probably not react to an expansion of monetary supply unless it reaches 1970s price inflationary levels. In addition, the government can pay back its public debt with devalued nominal dollars, which transfers wealth from the taxpayers to the government to pay its debt. Inflation is essentially a regressive consumption tax, which the government wants and the Fed attempts to “hide”. Not only is the Treasury’s debt burden reduced, but the government’s tax revenues inherently increase.

The Fed, in an effort to minimize inflationary perception, has for the last two decades supported naked COMEX gold shorts to keep gold prices artificially low. The Fed, as well as European central banks, unconditionally supported these naked shorts to deflate prices and stave off inflationary perception, as gold prices stay artificially low. This caused gold shorts to be “guaranteed” eventual profit, by Western central banks offering huge artificial supply whenever necessary, causing long positions in gold to be wiped out by margin calls and losses.

Now that the economy is contracting, the Fed won’t be able to funnel the excess liquidity into equities or other similar assets. It also can’t allow the excess liquidity of today, which is different in both its size (already $1.37 trillion) and nature (it is printed “counterfeit” money and not malinvested leveraged and debt-financed capital), to be directly injected into the economy. That would prove to be immediately very inflationary, as more than three times the money is chasing the same amount of goods, technically leading to 300% price inflation. These figures are strictly based on monetization of the Fed’s current liabilities, not including any future deficit spending (which is sure to dramatically increase, especially with Barack Obama’s policies), the American external debt, or unfunded social programs that need payment as Baby Boomers retire.

In order to funnel the excess liquidity into a less harmful asset, the Fed appears to be abandoning its support for gold naked shorts, causing shorts to suffer their own margin calls and cause rapid price expansion in gold. On December 2, for the first time in history, gold reached backwardation. Gold is not an asset that is consumed but rather it is stored, so it is traditionally in what is called a contango market. Contango means the price for future delivery is higher than the spot price (which is for immediate settlement). This is sensible because gold has a carrying cost, in the form of storage, insurance, and financing, which is reflected in the time premium for its futures. Backwardation is the opposite of contango, representing a situation in which the spot price is higher than the price for future delivery.

On December 2, COMEX spot prices for gold were 1.99% higher than December gold futures, which are for December 31 delivery. This is highly unusual and it provides strong evidence to the theory that the Fed is abandoning its support for gold shorts. Backwardation represents a perceived lack of supply (in this case, the artificial supply the Fed would always issue at strategic times no longer existed), causing investors to pay a premium for guaranteed delivery. On May 21, when crude oil futures reached contango, I started waiting patiently for the charts to offer a short sell trigger because the contango represented a supply glut relative to perception and current pricing. Oil was priced at $133/barrel at that time and six weeks later, on July 11, oil topped at $147, and six days later crude broke its 50DMA on volume and triggered a large bearish position against commodities that resulted in some of my most profitable trades last year.

I consider gold’s backwardation as a similar leading indicator to the opposite effect—a dramatic increase in prices. Crude began its most recent backwardation in August 2007 at around $75/barrel and increased dramatically over the next nine months to $133/barrel at contango levels. Backwardation, especially in the case of gold prices, reflects a lack of supply at current prices and is very bullish.

But why would the Fed abandon its support for naked COMEX shorts? What makes gold such a desirable asset to attempt to direct excess liquidity into? The unique nature of gold and precious metals provides its desirability in this Fed operation. Gold has little utility outside of store of value, unlike most commodities (like oil, which is consumed as quickly as it’s extracted and refined), so its supply/demand schedule has unusual traits. Most commodities and assets go down in price as the public loses capital, because the public has less to consume with and that is reflected in demand destruction that leads to price deflation. Gold is not directly consumed and its industrial use and consumer demand (jewelry) is at a lower ratio to its financial/investment demand than almost any other asset in the world.

As a result, gold is relatively “recession-proof,” as evidenced by its relative strength in 2008. Gold prices rose 1.7% last year, which is quite spectacular considering equity values went down 39.3%, real estate values went down 21.8%, and commodity prices went down 45.0% in the same period (as determined by the S&P 500, Case-Shiller Composite, and S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Indices, respectively). Because gold is not easily influenced by consumer spending, highly inflationary gold prices don’t do any direct damage to the public and are a good way to funnel excess liquidity without economic destruction.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is a staunch proponent of dollar devaluation against gold and is very supportive of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to do so in 1934. In the past, manipulating gold prices to artificially low levels was beneficial because it prevented capital flight into a non-productive asset like gold and kept production, investment, and consumption high (even if it were malinvestment and unfunded consumption).

Bernanke’s continued active support of gold price suppression would lead to widespread deflation that would collapse equity values and cause pervasive insolvencies and bankruptcies. Insolvency in insurers removes all emergency “backups” to irresponsible lending and spending, which would surely ruin the economy. Bernanke’s plan seems to be to devalue the dollar against gold with huge monetary expansion, causing equity values to rise and economic stabilization. I’ve heard estimates of 7500 and 8000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as being minimum support levels that would cause insurers and banks to realize massive losses, causing widespread insolvencies in them and other weak sectors like commercial real estate that would irreversibly collapse the economy.

This gold price expansion, set off by the massive short squeeze, will continue until gold prices reflect gold supply and Federal Reserve liabilities in circulation. The “intrinsic” value of gold today (called the Shadow Gold Price), calculated dividing total Fed liabilities by official gold holdings, is about $9600/oz, compared to around $865/oz today. This gold price calculation essentially assumes dollar-gold convertibility, as is mandated by the US Constitution and was utilized at various periods of American history. The near-term price expansion in gold, mainly led by abandonment of gold shorts and the first traces of inflationary risk, should show $2000/oz by the end of this year. As the leveraged deals from the pre-crash credit craze mature, with the majority of them maturing in 2011-2014, there will be more monetary expansion for debt repayment, which will structurally weaken the US Dollar (which is inherently bullish for gold) and will also provide new excess liquidity to be funneled into precious metals. This leads me to believe gold will be worth $10,000/oz by 2012.

The US Dollar’s strength as the equity and commodity markets collapsed was due to deleveraging and an effect of the Fed’s temporary sequestration of dollars, taking dollars out of supply. That is over. Oil seems to be putting in a bottom on strong volume, no one is left to buy any more negative real yield securities the Treasury is issuing, and gold has started looking very bullish.

But a good speculator always considers all situations. Even if deflation is to occur, which I see as next to impossible, gold prices should still rise to $1500/oz levels next year, because it has shown relative strength as one of the most viable assets left to invest in. In addition, the short squeeze occurring in gold will provide substantial technical price expansion, even in the absence of dollar devaluation. Because of this, I suggest gold as an investment cornerstone for the foreseeable future.

I see the market breaking down from these levels to about the November lows, starting on Monday. Commercial real estate stocks like Simon Property Group (SPG), Vornado Realty Trust (VNO), and Boston Property Group (BXP) should lead the down move, as well as insurers like Allstate (ALL), Prudential (PRU), and Hartford (HIG), banks like Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), and retailers like Sears Holdings (SHLD). I recommend short positions (including leveraged bearish ETFs like SRS and FAZ) and buying puts against these stocks for the very near term. If the market indeed breaks down but shows bouncing/strength around 7500-8000 in the Dow Jones, that would confirm to me that the Fed is able and willing to inflate its way out of this crisis and I will sell my bearish positions and buy into bullish gold positions.

Because in inflation the dollar is devalued, I am a proponent of owning bullion and avoiding gold ETFs, but I do believe gold and gold miner stocks will provide great returns over the next few years. Royal Gold (RGLD), Iamgold (IAG), Jaguar Mining (JAG), Anglogold Ashanti (AU), Newmont Mining (NEM), Randgold (GOLD), Goldcorp (GG), and Barricks (ABX) are among my favorite gold equities at this early stage in the process. Their charts are all quite bullish and look to see much more upside. I believe gold will pullback for a few weeks as the market continues lower and deleveraging occurs, but like I said, I don’t believe the Fed will allow the markets to breach its November lows. If indeed deflation wins out and the Fed can’t prevent equity value collapse, I will just hold on to my aforementioned bearish positions and trade in particularly those securities for the foreseeable future, and I suggest you to do the same.

Literally the only thing that I find suspicious in all of this is the fact that I see so many inflationists out there and I even see commercials on TV about precious metals. I usually like to stay contrarian to the public, which I consider irrational and wholly incompetent. But this enormous debt and monetary expansion is a structural problem that common sense may provide better insight for than the most complex of models and theories.

I leave you with this, a quote from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1934 Gold Reserve Act, which was the greatest theft of wealth I’ve aware of in American history:

“The finding that leaving the gold standard was the key to recovery from the Great Depression was certainly confirmed by the U.S. experience. One of the first actions of President Roosevelt was to eliminate the constraint on U.S. monetary policy created by the gold standard, first by allowing the dollar to float and then by resetting its value at a significantly lower level … With the gold standard constraint removed and the banking system stabilized, the money supply and the price level began to rise. Between Roosevelt’s coming to power in 1933 and the recession of 1937-38, the economy grew strongly.”

My predictions: gold at $2000/oz by the end of the year and $10,000/oz by 2012 and silver at $30/oz by the end of the year and $130/oz by 2012.

My Note: New AOL poll shows a majority of Americans would like to see Obama prove “eligibility” to be US President. My question still is and has been why doesn’t Obama just show the Birth Certificate instead of spending gobs of money on 3! defense attorney firms to prevent him from having to. What is he hiding? Or is he just letting his pride get into the way? All of us have to show our Birth Certificates for eligibility purpose i.e. get a drivers license and etc. As president elect he should be taking the lead in obeying identification/eligibility rules and regulations, not fighting them! Just show us the Birth Certificate!

Next, more great news on the Gold Market with the Fed confirming now is the time to BUY gold! Plus I have included some very good articles on everything from more junior miners to new alerts on Buying Gold-

On Tuesday we received direct confirmation from the Fed that the U.S. dollar will continue to be sacrificed to resuscitate ailing credit and asset markets. “Helicopter Ben” is finally living up to his advance billing, as dollars are set to rain down on the economy.

Gold markets got a huge burst of upside energy immediately following this surprisingly forthright Fed statement, and the long-anticipated move up to $875 is well underway. This is of course great news for our long positions, and it looks now like $875 will only be a temporary waypoint on the way back up to the all-time highs.

On a related note, the trading program for the Fractal Gold Report has captured the majority of the move up off the bottom, with our initial long position coming way back at $710. While many hedge funds and money managers have had a disastrous year, the program has not only come through this tough period unscathed, but is well into positive territory, and that includes all fees and commissions. (Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. There is risk of loss in all trading.) Subscribers to the Fractal Gold Report are eligible for participation in the trading program if they meet the brokerage firm requirements.

As the New Year approaches, this is the perfect time to assess which methods have been successful during this historic market shake-out. As they say, it’s easy to be a genius in a bull market. But the real “value-added” is most apparent during the turbulent periods.

My road-map for gold in 2008 called for a top around $1,010 in late March, followed by a lengthy and difficult corrective period which was likely to carry gold all the way back down to $730, which I subsequently adjusted to $675 as the correction was underway.

The actual high was $1,033 in late March. Then after a difficult six month corrective period, gold bottomed out at $681 in late October.

But the most important thing to notice on this monthly chart is how the correction has already accomplished its main job, which was to bring the monthly fractal dimension back over 55. This means that gold is again in position to rocket to the upside. A monthly trend in gold can carry prices up $400 or even $500. These are huge moves. There is still plenty of room to extend higher, even in the short-term.

The 150-minute fractal dimension has dropped quickly with this very strong breakout move, but it’s only down to 41, so there should be more than enough energy left to take gold up to $875 on Wednesday.

At this point my plan is to take profits at $875 if the 150-minute fractal dimension is again down in the low 30s or high 20s as gold is stretching up to this target. As we just saw at $810, there is little risk of missing out on further upside in such a scenario, and it can greatly reduce risk, as we can side-step that period of time when gold is highly unlikely to make further upside progress, and is much more likely to correct back down.

But after this expected short-term correction off the $875 energy level, we will be looking to get right back in for the next phase of this very exciting bullish pattern.

As always, I will provide daily updates on gold in the Fractal Gold Report, and subscribers with the annual plan also receive the Fractal Silver Report.

Gold has now entered the next and major leg of the long-term gold bull market after correcting down from $1,035.We believe it is now targeting $1,000, initially.This will be achieved with pullbacks and periods of consolidation.

We believe, too, that gold shares will benefit to a greater extent than gold itself, in the next moves up.In particular, we feel that soundly based gold “Junior” mining companies will benefit strongly.

Please refer to our latest issues for our preferred shares.

The move has been triggered by the clear signal from the Fed that the deflationary spiral gripping the global economy is far more serious than realized until now.The initial impact has already been seen in the precipitous fall of the U.S.$ to over $1.41 so far.As repeated attempts to re-invigorate the flow of liquidity have failed, the U.S. Federal Reserve had to do more, much more.

qThe Fed’s interest rate cuts and ‘Quantative Easing” will soon be followed by central banks across the world.

qThe swamping of the global economy with liquidity will stem deflation, but will also badly damage confidence in the world’s monetary system and give rise to explosive inflation.

qThe time it takes to reflate the global economy will be far shorter than most commentators expect.

qThe strains that the world will now feel, particularly in the different world economies, will become in many instances, unbearable, so we expect to see restrictive local action in those economies to manage the huge capital flows that will be experienced.

All of these prospects are very positive for gold.

We last issued a similar Alert early in September in 2007.History shows how correct we were!

This alert is to prompt you to act now before the market really takes off.

As you know, we atGold & Silver Forecaster are dedicated to following these developments so that Investors can maximize their understanding and profits from the gold and silver [and platinum] markets.As a result we expect to see the gold market shine far brighter than we have seen to date.

If you have not followed the newsletter, we recommend that yousubscribequickly to it so as to see which shares we believe will benefit investors the most and to keep your fingers ‘on the pulse’ of the gold price.Our coverage of the global economy is focused on the factors driving the gold price including oil, the $, and other relevant markets.

We will always keep the global perspective, making our letter “must-have” reading in these markets.

The biggest error an investor might make in the burgeoning third phase of the gold bull market is thinking the boat has been missed after new price territory is reached. Limiting your gains by trading in and out of the physical is insanity. Physical gold should only be considered if you plan to hold on to it for years, not months. Transportation, storage and security issues will chew up short term gains.

Moving into the market we are, where the US Dollar is going to crash in value, and gold is going to head in the opposite direction, it’s time to allocate investments intelligently among various asset classes that will benefit from the gold bull.

Producing mining companies are a great way to capture the upside gold will impart, and provides a very limited exposure to risk – especially if you’re considering one of the major producers such as Barrick, (NYSE: ABX) Newmont (NYSE: NEM) or Goldcorp (NYSE: GG), who tend to develop assets with strong economics in relatively stable countries.

South African senior producers have a special set of challenges ahead of them that make investment there riskier than in their North American counterparts. Electrical infrastructure is in major need of upgrade, and the depths to which these mines now extend negatively impact production costs going forward.

As you proceed down the list of producers, risk is intensified. This is because mid-tier producers typically gain access only to projects too small, too risky or too expensive for the big players. With increased risk comes the potential for a greater reward – especially with companies who have not yet defined the limits of deposits under development, or where the political situation is uncertain.

The biggest leverage right now, especially considering the drubbing they’ve experienced this year, are among the junior explorers. The juniors also occupy the highest risk segment, but no pain, no gain…or at least, little gain.

The current market is not differentiating efficiently the companies with potentially world class deposits and management from the “wanna be’s” who are probably never “gonna-be’s.” And in that lack of efficiency lies tremendous opportunity for risk-tolerant and patient investors.

You’ve probably heard a lot of talking heads on business stations suggesting that the economic stimulus initiatives are going to have a positive impact on stocks, and how the worst is over, and blah blah blah blah…the same guys were saying the worst is over back in August of last year. All data suggests that we are heading for a prolonged DEPRESSION, and just as in every long bear cycle, there will be little bullish corrections that will snag the naïve predictably.

The pressure on gold will be accordingly intensified. The premium will be on physical and senior production, which is why right now is the time be accumulating gold juniors. Historically, they are the last to benefit from strengthening gold fundamentals, and in this new environment of mistrust and paranoia, it will be no different.

Again, the primary consideration here must be advanced exploration/near-term production, plenty of cash on hand, and aggressive but sensible management. In the last year, I’ve visited several gold deposits, all of which have exceptional potential, and will continue to do so in the months ahead.

When I say exceptional potential, I mean companies that have the potential to earn investors ten times the money, just because they have not yet published a Canadian National Instrument #43-101 report, which is quickly becoming the accepted standard worldwide for mineral resource reporting.

The key is in looking closely at the exploration results and ignoring the headlines. There is a tendency emerging to call everything over 2 grams per tonne gold “high grade”, which is just plain misleading. And high grades can be less relevant where huge tonnage potential exists near infrastructure or existing milling operations, especially if they start at or near surface and have low strip ratios.

The key to evaluating results from a lay person’s perspective is continuity. Long intercepts of low grade mineralization that start near surface are better than short intercepts of higher grades at depth. If mineralization doesn’t start anywhere in the exploration zone above 200 metres in depth, there’s a lot of overburden to go through to reach the good stuff.

Similarly, and what NovaGold (NYSE: NG) is discovering, you can have a monstrous low-grade high tonnage deposit, and discover that the cost of building access and infrastructure can discourage investors and derail the path to production.

In NovaGold’s case though, as long as it is able to navigate through this troubled period where raising cash is tough, the economics improve as gold increases in value and construction materials and energy costs decline. Financing for these projects will become available as these economic factors solidify.

2009 will be a devastating year for many investors. Those with no experience or with little tolerance for risk will miss out on what will become the most profitable phase of the long term bull market for gold that began in 2002. Investors who buy a diverse basket of the very best juniors are going to make out very well, both in the short term and the longer.

Nation Seeks Answers to questions about the president-elect’s eligibility…

Baro also sent investigators to the newspaper offices to examine files, but the Advertiser could not confirm who actually placed the ad.

According to Baro’s affidavit, Beatrice Arakaki affirmed she was a neighbor of the address listed. She has lived at her current residence of 6075 Kalanianaole Highway from before 1961 to the present.

Moreover, Arakaki said she believed that when Obama lived with the Dunhams, his grandparents, the family address was in Waikiki, not on Kalanianaole Highway.

Baro was able to determine the previous owners of the residence at 6085 Kalanianaole Highway – the alleged address of Obama’s parents when he was born – were Orland S. and Thelma S. (Young) Lefforge, both of whom are deceased.

Baro’s affidavit also documents that the Certification of Live Birth that Obama posted on his campaign website is not the original “long form” birth certificate issued in 1961 by the obstetrician or physician giving birth and the hospital where the baby was born.

Baro’s investigators learned that a “Certificate of Hawaiian Birth Program” established in 1911 during the territorial era and terminated in 1972 during the statehood era allowed Hawaiian residents to apply for a “Late Birth Certificate,” called a “Certificate of Hawaiian Birth,” which appears identical to the “birth certificate” Obama posted on his campaign website.

“This raised the question in my mind as to whether the ‘Certification of Live Birth,’ which is the only document that has been produced and as previously stated solely handled by the representatives of factcheck.org outside Obama’s campaign, is a certification of a live birth or a late birth,” Baro stated in his affidavit.

“I am left with the conclusion that a simple request from Senator Barack Obama to produce the ‘long form’ (redacted if necessary) would end any speculation or question as to his birthplace,” Baro’s affidavit continued. “His continued denial to do so is suspect, in my professional opinion.”

Baro also pointed out that factcheck.org is funded by the Annenberg Foundation, which “is at the center of the ongoing Obama-Bill Ayers controversy – hardly an unbiased source for information in my view.”

America Online is conducting a new poll asking readers whether they believe there is any merit to the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s citizenship – and most respondents say “yes.”

There are more than 88,000 national votes in the unscientific survery. A full 52 percent of nationwide respondents believe people should be concerned about Obama’s citizenship, 42 percent say the controversy has no merit and 6 percent of voters remain undecided.

In all, 43 states agree that there could be merit to the Obama citizenship controversy.

On a similar note, WND poll asked readers, “Are you satisfied Obama is constitutionally eligible to assume the presidency?” A full 97 percent of 6,000 voters said “no.”

The top three answers were:

No, if I can’t get a driver’s license without an original birth certificate, how can Obama become president without one?

No, and Americans should continue to dog him about it through his term

No, there’s a reason why he’s unwilling to disclose his original birth certificate

AOL readers posted comments under its poll results, including the following:

No, I don’t think it has any merit. A birth certificate was posted on his web site showing his birth in Hawaii and a story to go with it. Those who are keeping it alive are just sore losers.

This could be put to rest with a $10 copy from the government, and yet Obama has spent somewhere between $500,000 and $800,000 to block this. Why does he waste taxpayers money on this foolishness.

The birth certificate thing is just more racism under a smoke screen. You birthers can keep this going as long as you want with no results, just as the “Impeach Bush” folks never got anywhere for the past 8 years.

Why spend thousands of dollars to block lawsuits that are requesting him to do what John McCain willfully and freely did?

It’s sad that every pathetic, Republican racist out there is clinging to the hope that President Obama is not a red-blooded, red, white and blue right down to his soxs American citizen! President Obama is a God given gift to America. He has a big job ahead of him … cleaning up Bush’s mess!

Now isn’t that interesting that the slime states of the left which are in the most trouble with their budgets are the ones who think this thug is real.

A private investigator has released to WND an affidavit that casts doubt on whether Barack Obama’s family lived at the address listed in the published notice of his birth in 1961.Jorge Baro was hired by WND to investigate issues related to Obama’s birth amid allegations the Democrat does not meet the Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen.”

Baro’s affidavit documents an interview his staff conducted with Beatrice Arakaki, who has lived at 6075 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu since before Obama was born.

The affadivit is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed prior to the November election in Hattiesburg, Miss., before U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett. The suit is one of several yet to be adjudicated that calls for proof of Obama being a “natural born citizen” as required by the Constitution.

Baro is the in-house senior investigator for Elite Legal Services, LLC, in Royal Palm Beach, Fla.

OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL

Investigator casts doubt on Obama’s birth residence

Neighbor believes family didn’t live at address in newspaper announcement

A private investigator has released to WND an affidavit that casts doubt on whether Barack Obama’s family lived at the address listed in the published notice of his birth in 1961.

Jorge Baro was hired by WND to investigate issues related to Obama’s birth amid allegations the Democrat does not meet the Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen.”

Baro’s affidavit documents an interview his staff conducted with Beatrice Arakaki, who has lived at 6075 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu since before Obama was born.

The affadivit is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed prior to the November election in Hattiesburg, Miss., before U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett. The suit is one of several yet to be adjudicated that calls for proof of Obama being a “natural born citizen” as required by the Constitution.

Baro is the in-house senior investigator for Elite Legal Services, LLC, in Royal Palm Beach, Fla.

In Hawaii, WND was able to locate at the Honolulu public library microfilm of a notice placed in the Sunday Advertiser Aug. 13, 1961. The announcement in the “Births, Marriages, Death” section read: “Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4.”

Arakaki told Baro’s investigators she had no recollection of Obama being born or of the family living next door having a black child born to a white mother.

Baro sent a team of investigators to Honolulu to explore records regarding current residents of Kalanianaole Highway and to track down residents back to 1961.

Baro’s investigators were unable to locate any current or past resident of Kalanianaole Highway who could recall Obama or his family living at the address listed in the Sunday Advertiser announcement.

Jesse Lauriston Livermore is perhaps the most famous stock trader of the early 20th century.

Famous for amassing and subsequently losing several multi-million dollar fortunes, Livermore also shorted the stock market heavily during the crashes of 1907 and 1929.

Livermore, who was also known as the Boy Plunger, is famed for making—and losing—several multi-million dollar fortunes and short selling during the stock market crashes in 1907 and 1929.

One of Livermore’s core trading rules was…

Be Right and Sit Tight

It’s simple…

Invest in a growing trend and have the courage to hold long-term for really big gains.

Clearly, the gold bull market is one such growing trend. And investors who “sit tight” will undoutbly see big gains by owning the precious metal now.

Buy Gold Now

The bull market has already pushed gold prices over 300% higher since 2001. And now with the world’s demand for gold is starting to significantly outpace supplies, even higher prices are on the horizon.

During the third-quarter there was a colossal 10.5 million ounce deficit (worth $8.5 billion) in world’s supply and demand of gold. World gold demand increased over 50% since the second-quarter while supplies dropped 64% year-on-year.

Gold demand, particularly in the investment sector, is currently at all-time highs. But estimates suggest that the world will only produce 76.8 million troy ounces during 2008. This represents a 9% decline in world gold production since 2001.

Gold Mine Supplies to Continue Falling

The world financial meltdown has forced the shut down of hundreds of gold mines around the world and slashed exploration and development budgets across the board. And the near-term future of new investment still looks pretty grim.

The effects of these budget cutbacks won’t be felt in the gold market for several months to years. But the lack of investment money going into gold mines right now-and probably for over the next several months-will certainly have an effect on global gold supplies in the future.

And the lack of these supplies will positively affect gold prices.

The global economic crisis has motivated miners of all metals to cut back on exploration and development activities. Below is a just partial list of mine closures and delays that have been announced over the past several weeks:

November 18
Stillwater Mining [NYSE: SWC] scales down operations at its East Boulder mine, reduces capital expenditure and cut jobs.

November 18
The world’s third-largest platinum-miner, Lonmin, announces the closure of South African mines, and says it will halt growth projects.
November 19
First Majestic Silver [TSX: FR] temporarily suspends all activities at its Cuitaboca project.

November 19
Weatherly International [LON: WTI] announces the closing two of its copper mining projects in Namibia.

November 20
Hochschild Mining [LON: HOC] announces that the company will delay its San Felipe zinc project.

November 21
Katanga Mining [TSX: KAT] temporarily halts mining operations at the Tilwezembe open pit and ore processing at its Kolwezi concentrator.

November 24
Norilsk Nickel put its Waterloo and Silver Swan underground mines into care and maintenance.

November 26
Bindura Nickel announces the closure of two nickel mines, and its smelter and refinery operations.

December 1
The Xstrata-Merafe joint venture suspends operations at another five ferrochrome furnaces, bringing the company’s offline capacity to 906,000 tonnes per year, or more than half of its annual production capability.

A corruption scandal in President-elect Obama’s backyard is the last thing this country needs. But like it or not, that’s exactly what we have in the unfolding drama of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest earlier this week for trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. The federal prosecutor in the case — Patrick Fitzgerald, the man whose investigation of the Valerie Plame leak case nearly paralyzed the Bush White House for a time — has made it clear that nothing ties Obama directly to the Blagojevich scheme. But the timing of Fitzgerald’s announcement raises some serious questions.

Apparently, Fitzgerald knew that Blagojevich was trolling for bidders for the Obama seat in the waning days of the general election. Before the first votes were counted to elect Obama president, Blagojevich was so confident in Obama’s victory he was already soliciting bids for the seat. And Fitzgerald already had substantial evidence that Blagojevich was engaged in major corruption before the governor put a “for sale” sign on the Senate seat. So why didn’t the federal prosecutor act prior to the election? Had he done so, of course, it could have damaged Obama.

Many would argue that bringing down another Illinois Democrat before the election would have smelled like a dirty trick. The federal prosecutor, after all, was a Republican appointee, and the McCain campaign had already run ads trying to tie Obama to political corruption in Chicago. One of Obama’s early financial supporters, land developer Tony Rezko, was convicted on corruption charges earlier this year, and Rezko figures prominently in the Blagojevich scandal. Had Blagojevich been forced to do a perp walk before Election Day, voters might have asked why Obama had endorsed Blagojevich just two years earlier, considering the governor was at that time under investigation for taking bribes. The endorsement would have been yet another example of Obama’s bad judgment in his associations from Rezko to the Rev. Wright to Bill Ayers.

But even if Fitzgerald acted fairly and prudently by not moving against Blagojevich in the heat of a political campaign, why did he decide to act this week? His explanation was that he was trying to stop “a political corruption crime spree.” Under existing Illinois law, the governor has final authority to appoint someone to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat and wiretaps suggest Blagojevich was about to do just that. According to the criminal complaint, Blagojevich had found at least one bidder — identified only as Senate Candidate 5 — who offered to raise the governor $500,000 and another $1 million if he got the appointment. Perhaps Fitzgerald simply wanted to go public before Blagojevich sealed the deal.

But there are other possible explanations. Fitzgerald’s hand may have been forced by the Chicago Tribune, which reported Dec. 5 that Blagojevich’s phone lines were being tapped. This information signaled everyone — the governor and anyone talking to the governor or his aides — that they could become ensnared in a huge criminal investigation leading to indictments.

President-elect Obama has emphatically denied that he ever talked to Blagojevich about his Senate replacement. And certainly Fitzgerald has done everything he can to confirm that Obama is not implicated in any way. But there are a number of unanswered questions about what contact members of the president-elect’s team might have had with the governor or his aides, directly or through intermediaries. A number of aides, including the incoming White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, and former campaign leader David Axelrod, have long-standing ties to Blagojevich. And Axelrod has already had to revise his earlier assertion that Obama had spoken with Blagojevich about candidates to replace him in the Senate.

The president-elect has said “I want to gather all the facts about any staff contact that may have taken place. We’ll have those in the next few days and we’ll present them.”

The president-elect’s credibility is on the line. For the good of the country, we must all hope this scandal doesn’t infect anyone in the new administration. The best way to ensure that is for the president-elect and his aides to be forthcoming quickly.

—

Linda Chavez is the author of “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.”

I have not seen it recorded whether John F. Kennedy, after he was elected president in 1960, held conversations with Massachusetts Gov. Foster Furcolo as to who would be appointed to fill his seat in the Senate. History does record that Furcolo, just nine days before turning the governorship over to the Republican elected to succeed him, appointed one Benjamin A. Smith II, a college roommate of Kennedy’s and former mayor of Gloucester, who chose not to seek the seat in the next election in 1962, which happened to be the year in which Edward Kennedy turned 30 and was therefore old enough to run for it.

Memory tells me that there was little fuss made of this at the time. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy obviously wanted someone appointed to keep the seat warm for Teddy, and so it was done. And Edward Kennedy has turned out to be an able and accomplished senator.

That was a different tableau from the one we have seen unfold in Chicago this past week. Furcolo was an intelligent man, disappointed to have failed to win the state’s other Senate seat and destined not to win elective office again. But he knew that it would not pay to buck the Kennedys.

Rod Blagojevich, the governor who under Illinois statute has the power to appoint a senator to fill out the remaining two years of Barack Obama’s Senate term, is made of different stuff. He was arrested last Tuesday, and the U.S. attorney filed a criminal complaint and made public tapes of Blagojevich seeking personal favors in return for the Senate seat.

Obama denied having conversations with Blagojevich about his choice, though his political strategist David Axelrod said last month that Obama had. Obama declined further comment when asked whether his staff members had discussed the matter with the governor, but he then promised to reveal the details later.

In the ordinary course of things, there would be nothing wrong with such conversations (did Foster Furcolo decide on Benjamin A. Smith II without prompting?). And the construction of the evidence most negative to Obama one can currently make is that someone in Team Obama suggested nominating Obama insider Valerie Jarrett, Blagojevich simply refused or asked for something improper in return and Team Obama promptly broke off communications. Any impropriety in this version was on Blagojevich’s part, not on Obama’s.

Still, these are not headlines the Obama transition team wants. So far, the president-elect has won wide approval for his performance since the election, with poll numbers significantly higher than George W. Bush or Bill Clinton got in their transition periods. His leading foreign, defense and economic appointments have won high praise from all sides, in some cases more from conservatives than liberals. And in a time of financial crisis and foreign threats, he has seemed to keep a clear head and a steady hand.

He has appeared to avoid all but small mistakes, and his theme of unifying the nation — muted perhaps necessarily in the adversary environment of the campaign — has come forth loud and clear.

From all this the Blagojevich scandal is an unwanted distraction. It is a reminder that, for all his inspirational talk of hope and change, Obama, like Blagojevich, are both products of Chicago Democratic politics, which is capable of producing leaders both sublime and sordid.

Obama has not always avoided the latter. For 20 years he attended the church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, now thrown under the bus, and for more than a decade engaged in mutually beneficial exchanges political and financial with the political fixer Tony Rezko, now in federal custody.

Blagojevich, never a close political ally, has now been thrown under the bus, too, and seems likely to share Rezko’s fate. Obama fans can point out, truthfully, that other revered presidents had seamy associates and made common cause on their way up with men who turned out to be scoundrels. Franklin Roosevelt happily did business with Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly, though warned that he was skimming off money from federal contracts. John Kennedy no more thought to deny a request from the Mayor Daley of his day than Obama has thought to buck the Mayor Daley of his.

But as Kennedy supposedly said of a redolent Massachusetts politician, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” The man in question was the Democratic nominee for governor and was not elected. Until Patrick Fitzgerald released his tapes, Barack Obama never said the same of Rod Blagojevich.

Obama has profited greatly from his careful climb through Chicago politics. But there is an old saying that in politics nothing is free — there is just some question about when you pay the price. Obama is paying it now.

Not even the U.S. Supreme Courtcan kill the dispute that has developed over Sen. Barak Obama’s eligibility to occupy the Oval Office based on questions raised over his birthplace and citizenship and his steadfast refusal to provide documentation on the issue.

The case of Leo C. Donofrio v. New Jersey Secretary of StateNina Mitchell Wells claimed Obama does not meet the Constitution’s Article 2, Section 1 “natural-born citizen” requirement for president because of his dual citizenship at birth.

The new case, Cort Wrotnowski v. Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut secretary of state, also makes a dual citizenship argument. It had been rejected by Justice Ruth Ginsburg Nov. 26 but then was resubmitted to Justice Antonin Scalia. There was no word of its fate for about 10 days, then today the court’s website confirmed it has been distributed for Friday’s conference, a meeting at which the justices consider whether to take cases.

“It includes a more solid brief and a less treacherous lower court procedural history,” Donofrio writes on his Natural Born Citizen blog. “I must stress that [Wrotnowski] does not have the same procedural hang up that mine does.”

The website explained an appeals judge in New Jersey had incorrectly characterized Donofrio’s original complaint as a “motion for leave to appeal” rather than a “direct appeal.”

“If Cort’s application is also denied then the fat lady can sing,” the website stated. “Until then, the same exact issue is before SCOTUS as was in my case. Cort’s application before SCOTUS incorporates all of the arguments and law in mine, but we improved on the arguments in Cort’s quite a bit as we had more time to prepare it.”

Besides the plaintiffs for these two and about a dozen other legal actions that challenge Obama’s eligibility in courts around the country, there are tens of thousands of people who are alarmed by the unanswered questions about Obama.

The campaign included 6,682 packages of nine letters each delivered to the court on the case about Obama’s eligibility under the “a natural born citizen” requirement

“If we didn’t do everything possible to let the Supreme Court justices know what a concern this is to millions of Americans, I would feel like I was letting down the Constitution and the men who framed it – not to mention every citizen of the United States living now and in the future,” Joseph Farah, WND’s founder and editor, said of the campaign. “This constitutional eligibility test has become a key issue with me because if the plain language of the Constitution is no longer taken seriously by our nation’s controlling legal authorities, we have become an outlaw nation – no longer under the rule of law but under the rule of men.”

Last month WND reported worries over a “constitutional crisis” that could be looming over the issue of Obama’s citizenship. The concerns were raised in a lawsuit in California asking state officials to prevent Electoral College members from voting for Obama until they investigated his eligibility, a case being handled by the United States Justice Foundation.

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, hasn’t simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor’s office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born. There have been other allegations that Obama actually was born in Kenya during a time when his father was a British subject. A one point a Kenyan ambassador said Obama’s birthplace in Kenya already was being recognized.

Among the plaintiffs in the California case is presidential candidate Alan Keyes.

“Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the office of president of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the president of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal,” the action challenges.

Wrotnowski’s case challenges the courts to review allegations of election fraud, suggesting the Connecticut secretary of state should not have placed Obama’s name on the ballot without verification of his eligibility.

After state courts refused to take the case, he said the point was, “this document has not been produced.”

“I’m not the first, not the last, just among a growing number of people across the country who’ve become distressed about the lack of disclosure,”

Donofrio had alleged that Obama’s dual citizenship disqualifies him. Obama’s campaign said the British citizenship expired, leaving him with “natural-born” U.S. citizenship.

Donofrio’s case originally was denied a conference of the judges by Justice David H. Souter, but Justice Clarence Thomas agreed to bring it back for consideration last week. To go forward, from conference to a full hearing, the case needed the approval of four of the Supreme Court’s nine justices.

Also, the “certification of live birth” posted by the Obama campaign cannot be viewed as authoritative, critics allege.

“Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence,” according to reports. “The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama’s original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him.”

Critics also raise the circumstances of Obama’s time during his youth in Indonesia, where he was listed as having Indonesian citizenship. Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship, raising the possibility of Obama’s mother having given up his U.S. citizenship.

Any subsequent U.S. citizenship then, the case claims, would be “naturalized,” not “natural-born.”

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-electBarack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a “natural born citizen,” one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.

Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidateRoger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.

At least one other appeal over Obama’s citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg’s lawsuit.

My Question Is Still Why Doesn’t Obama just produce his Birth Certificate So this is over once and for all!

Otherwise even according to the Chicago Tribune “this will drive a wedge in an already undivided public”

UPDATE: The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a “natural born citizen,” one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.

Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.

At least one other appeal over Obama’s citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg’s lawsuit.

This is a story that won’t go away.Barack Obama‘s birth certificate, the controversy over allegations that Obama is not eligible to take office next month has reached the Supreme Court, which is expected to announce Monday whether it will consider the matter.tmjones@tribune.com

Five weeks after the State of Hawaii vouched for the authenticity of President-elect

The fight is unusual because it thrives outside the so-called mainstream media, far beyond the oak-paneled offices of $700-an-hour lawyers and a world away from the 535 individuals whose surnames are preceded by Representative or Senator.

This is a different army at work, in an environment increasingly influenced by the Internet.

“It’s only being mentioned by a relative few, by the real die-hard, anti-Obama crowd,” said Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, the trade bible of the talk-radio industry. “On mainstream talk radio, it’s not a big deal right now. I think it’s run its course.”

“But,” Harrison added, “we live in a time that, because of the Internet, all points of view can live forever.”

Just as there is a split on the legitimacy of the legal claims, there is also a split within the media on the merits of the story. Is it the last gasp of opposition from opponents of Obama who have a found community of like-minded believers on the Internet, or is there a legal question to be resolved? The court will answer the latter question this week.

The campaign challenging the legitimacy of Obama’s 1961 birth certificate or the legality of his taking office is chronicled by WorldNetDaily, a popular, politically right-leaning site that was the 26th most-visited news and media Web site during November, according to Hitwise, which monitors Net traffic.

“If this [Obama taking office] happens, the question of eligibility for the highest office in the land will no longer even be a matter for concern,” wrote Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WorldNetDaily.

“Precedent will have been established. Arnold Schwarzenegger will suddenly be eligible to run for the office in 2012,” Farah wrote, referring to the Austrian-born California governor and film star.

An Obama spokesman declined to comment for this story.

The lawyers who, in at least six states including New Jersey and Connecticut, have argued Obama is not a natural-born citizen and cannot be president include one who supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, one who has thundered for decades against the legality of the federal government collecting income tax, and one who argues that Sen. John McCain, by virtue of his birth 72 years ago in the Panama Canal Zone, would be banned from moving into the Oval Office, had he won last month’s election.

Leo Donofrio is a New Jersey lawyer who tried to get Obama and McCain stricken from the New Jersey ballot in November. Donofrio’s case was presented Friday to justices of the Supreme Court. Another case challenging Obama’s eligibility, this one from Pennsylvania, has not yet been presented to the full court for its consideration.

“My question is on a pure constitutional ground,” said Donofrio. “[Obama] is a citizen of the United States. I just don’t believe he’s a natural-born citizen.”

This is the thrust of the attack, picked up by people such as Bob Schulz, an upstate New York engineer who bought two full-page ads in the Tribune this month that called Obama “a usurper” who “would be entitled to no allegiance, obedience or support from the People.”

Schulz has challenged the federal government on issues including the Iraq War, the Patriot Act and the income tax. “I have a long history of petitioning the government for redress of grievances for violations of the constitution and the law,” said Schulz, who said he and his wife live on Social Security checks. Schulz said the ads cost “tens of thousands of dollars” and were paid for with more than 500 private donations from individuals who support the effort. He said there were “no financial angels” behind it.

If the Supreme Court decides not to consider the case, Donofrio said there “won’t be any beating on the drums saying there wasn’t any justice.”

But that will not be the end of the matter, Farah vowed.

“It’ll plague Obama throughout his presidency. It’ll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on [ President Bill] Clinton,” Farah said. “It’s not going to go away and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public.”

That may underscore a landscape change in the media, where the Internet is playing a bigger role in setting the agenda. In 2004, the so-called swift boat campaign against Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, began on the Internet. In fact, the co-author of “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” Jerome Corsi, also wrote “Obama Nation,” a book critical of Obama, published earlier this year.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Duke University, said the Internet’s role in forming public opinion is gaining strength. WorldNetDaily, for instance, has one of the faster-growing audiences on the Internet, up 62 percent in the past year, according to Hitwise.

Nyhan co-wrote a study this year that said journalists’ attempts to correct misinformation is unlikely to sway public perceptions because many people want to believe the misperception.

“People often have a strong bias for believing the evidence they want to believe and disbelieving what they don’t believe,” Nyhan said. “There is less of a sense that we all have a common set of facts we can agree on. There’s a polarization, and we can’t even agree on the basic factual assumptions to have a debate.”

Court delays action on suit

The Supreme Court held off Friday on deciding whether to grant a hearing in a long-shot lawsuit that would decide whether Barack Obama can constitutionally become president as a “natural born” U.S. citizen.

The Friday list of court orders that denies or grants hearings did not mention the lawsuit, which says Mr. Obama should be disqualified from the presidency because he purportedly acquired the same British citizenship that his father had when he was born.

A spokesman for the court said the decision on whether to hear the suit brought by retired New Jersey lawyer Leo Donofrio is likely to be announced next week.

A decision not to grant a writ of certiorari — the legal term for the declaration that the justices will hear the case — would mean that a lower court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit can stand.

The Supreme Court’s justices met in a private conference Friday morning to discuss the issue. At least four of the court’s nine justices must approve before the case is heard.

Justice Clarence Thomas picked up the petition to hear the lawsuit after it was denied by Justice David H. Souter. Justice Thomas referred it to the full court, which decided to distribute the case for the justices’ conference.

Mr. Obama demonstrated his citizenship during his campaign by circulating copies of his birth certificate, which showed he was born in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961. But unlike many of the lawsuits regarding Mr. Obama’s citizenship — which claim he really was born on foreign soil — Mr. Donofrio’s case concedes that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii but says he still held foreign citizenship at birth.

“Since Barack Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of Senator Obama’s birth, then Senator Obama was a British citizen ‘at birth,’ just like the framers of the Constitution, and therefore, even if he were to produce an original birth certificate proving he were born on U.S. soil, he still wouldn’t be eligible to be president.”

Kenya was British East Africa until it received its independence in 1963.

Legal scholars doubt the court will hear the case. The Supreme Court rarely grants the kind of court orders — or stays — sought by Mr. Donofrio. And doing so in this case would set up an unprecedented challenge to the presidency of a man who already has won the election and almost certainly will have taken office by the time any hearings or decisions could occur.

About a half-dozen people who say the court should stop Mr. Obama from becoming president protested in front of the Supreme Court on Friday morning.

“He does not meet the criteria of the Constitution that the Founding Fathers set out,” said Roger Bredow, an Internet publisher from Bethlehem, Ga., who has tried to rally lawsuit supporters to block Mr. Obama’s presidency.

Valerie Wohllheden, of Alexandria, said the danger is that in deciding the lawsuit, the Supreme Court might bend to “the will of the people” by allowing Mr. Obama to become president despite constitutional provisions.

The case of Leo C. Donofrio v. New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, which claims Obama does not meet the Constitution’s Article 2, Section 1 “natural-born citizen” requirement for president, was initially denied a hearing by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, but Justice Clarence Thomas agreed to bring it back for review today.

In order to go forward in the process, the case needs four of the Supreme Court’s nine justices to approve a full hearing.

Bredow created a YouTube video inviting supporters to travel to Washington, D.C., and join him in urging the Supreme Court to hear the Donofrio case.

“If I’m going to be honest with you,” Bredow confessed, “I thought I might be the only person here.”

DCist contributor Dave Weigel reported roughly 15 to 20 people showed up for the rally.

“There aren’t a lot of people out here today,” said Steve Brindle, who drove into the capital from Pennsylvania. “There are a lot of people talking about this back home. Really, everyone’s asking questions.”

Donofrio’s questions began months ago.

Donofrio’s original suit sought a court order to stop the Nov. 4 presidential election. When that was denied, he amended his complaint to stop the Electoral College from certifying Obama as the winning candidate when it meets Dec. 15.

Unlike many of the lawsuits regarding Obama’s “natural-born citizen” status, the Donofrio case makes no allegation that Obama was born on foreign soil. Instead, Donofrio contends Obama was a British citizen at birth, because of citizenship in a British colony, Kenya.

“Don’t be distracted by the birth certificate and Indonesia issues,” Donofrio writes on his Natural Born Citizen blog. “They are irrelevant to Senator Obama’s ineligibility to be president. Since Barack Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of Senator Obama’s birth, then Senator Obama was a British citizen ‘at birth.'”

Obama’s Fight the Smears website confirms that Donofrio is correct about the crat’s citizenship at birth, but says his dual citizenship with Britain expired, leaving him with only American citizenship.

Donfrio, however, contends that the Constitution was written in such a way to exclude dual citizens like Obama.

“The Framers of the Constitution, at the time of their birth,” Donofrio writes, “were also British citizens, and that’s why the Framers declared that, while they were citizens of the United States, they themselves were not ‘natural born citizens.'”

“Therefore,” Donofrio summarizes, “even if he were to produce an original birth certificate proving he were born on U.S. soil, he still wouldn’t be eligible to be president.”

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, simply hasn’t ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor’s office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born. There have been other allegations that Obama actually was born in Kenya during a time when his father was a British subject.

Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others filed a court petition in California asking the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state’s 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office.

The California action was filed by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation on behalf of Keyes, the presidential candidate of the American Independent Party, along with Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.

“Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal,” the action challenges.

The popular vote Nov. 4 favored Obama over Sen. John McCain by several percentage points. But because of the distribution of the votes, Obama is projected to take the Electoral College vote by a 2-to-1 margin.

The California case states, “There is a reasonable and common expectation by the voters that to qualify for the ballot, the individuals running for office must meet minimum qualifications as outlined in the federal and state Constitutions and statutes, and that compliance with those minimum qualifications has been confirmed by the officials overseeing the election process,” the complaint said, when in fact the only documentation currently required is a signed statement from the candidate attesting to those qualifications.

“Since [the secretary of state] has, as its core, the mission of certifying and establishing the validity of the election process, this writ seeks a Court Order barring SOS from certifying the California Electors until documentary proof that Senator Obama is a ‘natural born’ citizen of the United States of America is received by her,” the document said.

“This proof could include items such as his original birth certificate, showing the name of the hospital and the name and the signature of the doctor, all of his passports with immigration stamps, and verification from the governments where the candidate has resided, verifying that he did not, and does not, hold citizenship of these countries, and any other documents that certify an individual’s citizenship and/or qualification for office.

The “certification of live birth” posted by the Obama campaign cannot be viewed as authoritative, the case alleges.

“Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence,” the document said. “The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama’s original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him.”

The case also raises the circumstances of Obama’s time during his youth in Indonesia, where he was listed as having Indonesian citizenship. Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship, raising the possibility of Obama’s mother having given up her U.S. citizenship.

Any subsequent U.S. citizenship then, the case claims, would be “naturalized,” not “natural-born.”

JERUSALEM – Claiming Barack Obama has roots in the Islamic religion, an Egyptian cleric has broadcast a plea urging Obama to convert to Islam while warning if the U.S. doesn’t withdraw its troops from the Middle East and provide aid to Muslims, those “eager for [death]” will attack America.

“My message to [Obama] is threefold,” declares Egyptian cleric Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal, speaking last week on the state-funded Al Nas religious television network. “First, I invite him to convert to Islam. This is the call of the Prophet and of Allah. Oh, Obama – convert to Islam, and you will be saved.”

After President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee let a Dec. 1 deadline slip by without responding to Pennsylvania attorney Philip J. Berg’s petition for writ of certiorari demanding Obama produce a legitimate birth certificate, the attorney is now filing a motion to stop Obama from taking office in January.

Berg has filed an emergency motion for immediate injunction, America’s Right blogger and legal writer Jeff Schreiber reports. Berg is asking the court to stop state certification of electors to keep the Electoral College from meeting Dec. 15 and casting votes for Obama. He is also seeking to postpone the official vote count Jan. 6 until the court reaches a decision on his appeal.

“It is my firm belief, my one thousand percent firm belief,” Berg told Schreiber, “that he does not meet the natural born qualifications, that he should not be voted for by the electors, and that he should not be sworn in this January unless he shows his credentials … which he of course cannot, simply because he does not have them.”

Berg filed his petition Oct. 30, and according to procedure, a response from the defendants was due yesterday. While the Federal Election Commission waived its right to respond to the complaint Nov. 18, there has been no word from Obama or the DNC.

The parties are not legally required to respond, and Berg said he doesn’t expect them to do so. He believes the defendants will argue that he lacks standing.

“If they were going to respond, I get the feeling that it would have been in there by now,” Berg told Schreiber. “The feeling may be that, if they respond, they could hold themselves out for perjury later on when we’re successful. That’s why, in the lower court, they just relied on a motion to dismiss based on standing. Here, they may not want to file an actual, specific response in the Supreme Court for fear they’ll be held to it later.”

“We’re finding that there is a great interest across the United States,” Berg said. “I’ve been on talk show after talk show, and the more the case is discussed, the more people are made aware of it and are disgusted by the fact that Obama just won’t simply produce the credentials showing he’s qualified. Hopefully, some authority will demand it.”

Concerned citizens have taken yet another step to compel Barack Obama to release documentation proving he is a natural-born citizen – by funding a full-page “Open letter to Obama” in tomorrow’s issue of the Chicago Tribune

The letter, signed by Chairman Robert L. Schulz, is a petition for redress of what the group claims is a violation of the natural-born citizen clause of the Constitution (Article II, Section 1):

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

“Dear Mr. Obama,” the letter begins. “Representing thousands of responsible American citizens who have also taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, I am duty bound to call on you to remedy an apparent violation of the Constitution. Compelling evidence supports the claim that you are barred from holding the Office of President by the ‘natural-born citizen’ clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

Schulz lists the following reasons citizens are concerned about Obama’s status:

You have posted on the Internet an unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited, computer-generated birth form created in 2007, a form that lacks vital information found on any original, hand signed Certificate of Live Birth, such as hospital address, signature of attending physician and age of mother.

Hawaii Dept of Health will not confirm your assertion that you were born in Hawaii.

U.S. Law in effect in 1961 denied U.S. citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.

In 1965, your mother legally relinquished whatever Kenyan or U.S. citizenship she and you had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen.

We the People said it chose the Chicago Tribune because it is the principal newspaper in president-elect’s hometown with more than a half-million readers. Obama is said to be one of them.

The letter states Obama is “under a moral, legal and fiduciary duty to proffer such evidence” and that he may invite a “national crisis that would undermine in domestic peace and stability of the Nation” if he assumes office as a “usurper” without meeting natural-born citizenship requirements. It claims Obama would not be entitled to allegiance, obedience or support from U.S. citizens, the armed forces or civilians in the executive branch if he “usurps” the office – rendering legislation requiring his signature and his orders “legally void.”We the People requests that Obama provide its team of forensic scientists with his original birth certificate on Dec. 5, 6 and 7. The foundation is currently raising $20,000 to cover the expenses of employing the forensic team in Hawaii. The letter also demands delivery of documentary evidence of Obama’s citizenship before the group’s scheduled press conference in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8.

The petition concludes with a warning:

All state Electors are now on Notice that unless you provide documentary evidence before December 15, that conclusively establishes your eligibility, they cannot cast a vote for you without committing treason to the Constitution.

Another newspaper advertisement

The Chicago Tribune letter is the second high-profile newspaper advertisement of its kind. Another ad challenging Obama’s natural-born citizen status appeared on Page 5 of the Nov. 17 edition of the Washington Times.

WND columnist Janet Porter of Faith2Action, is working on funding the new ad for release on television. Her website is accepting contributions for the project until Dec. 15.

“These are the facts,” she wrote. “The Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen. Obama’s grandmother said she was there when Barack was born in Kenya. Obama refuses to release his original birth certificate. Instead of a birth certificate, Obama’s campaign posted a certification given to those born abroad. Experts have called even that document an ‘obvious forgery.'”

Porter said $12,000 buys a national 60-second ad on Fox News between 5 and 6 p.m.

“I say let’s buy a few of those and publicize it so the rest of the world finally hears about the constitutional crisis we’re in,” she wrote. “Then, the Bill O’Reillys, Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs may decide to cover the story of the century.”

A lawyer playing a major part in a California lawsuit urging officials to prevent the state’s 55 Electoral College votes from being recorded for Barack Obama until questions about his citizenship are resolved has written to county clerks around the state, seeking an investigation into a process that has allowed a dead woman to be listed as an official elector.

According to Gary Kreep, executive director of the United States Justice Foundation, the clerks have been advised about the “irregularity” in the list of electors provided by the Democratic Party in California.

“In the 28th Congressional District (Congressman Howard Berman), situated in Los Angeles County, Ilene Huber is listed as the presidential elector designated in that district. However, as shown in the attached certified statement of Dean C. Logan, registrar-recorder/county clerk of the county of Los Angeles, state of California, there is no Ilene Huber listed as a registered voter in the County of Los Angeles. A statewide search of public records has revealed only one Ilene Huber in the state of California, and she is deceased-a copy of her certificate of death is attached hereto as well,” the advisory said.

“Further, according to Chris Myers, director of research for the California Democratic Party, who submitted the list of presidential electors for the Democratic Party to the office of the California secretary of state, there are additional, undisclosed, ‘errors’ in the list of electors. This admission was made in a telephone conversation with a representative of the American Independent Party on or about November 20, 2008,” the letter continued.

“It is therefore respectfully suggested to you that an investigation be made by each of your respective offices into the accuracy and validity of the list of presidential electors submitted for the ballot in your respective counties. It is believed that an attempt will be made to ‘revise’ the list of such electors so that those named individuals that were selected by the voters will be replaced by other names. Such ‘revisions’ will, in all likelihood, result in litigation being filed to challenge such attempts to alter the ballot post election, and may result in your county being included as a defendant therein,” it said.

Kreep said the integrity of elections in the U.S. needs to be maintained, or “the vote of the people becomes merely something that can be ignored by those who hold the reins of political power at the moment.”

Kreep previously told WND that because of the lack of proof of Obama’s U.S. citizenship and the consequent questions over his ability to meet the Constitution’s requirement that only a “natural born citizen” can be president, the Obama administration will be considered by some to be fraudulent.

“We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time. As long as we have money , we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status,” he previously told WND. “We’re already talking to groups who are willing to be plaintiffs.”

The complaint urges the California secretary of state to refuse to allow the state’s 55 Electoral College votes to be cast until the issue of Obama’s eligibility to hold office is resolved.

The case is one of more than a dozen legal challenges brought over Obama’s citizenship. The cases all cite Obama’s clouded history and the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that a president be a natural born citizen.

There have been allegations Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as his campaign has reported, that he could be considered a British subject because of his father’s residency in what then was a British protectorate that later became Kenya, and that the “Certificate of Live Birth” posted on his website simply shows his mother registered his birth in Hawaii after he was born, but does not document a location of birth.

There also have been questions raised about his travels as a youth, including the years he spent registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school, and his later travels to Pakistan at a time when U.S. passports weren’t welcome in that nation.

The California action was filed on behalf of Keyes, as well as Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.

“Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal,” the action challenges.

U.S. State Department officials declined to respond to WND inquiries about the process for keeping a U.S. citizenship while attending schools in Indonesia, or the possibility of a U.S. citizen keeping that status while traveling on another nation’s passport.

But several online “fact” sites have contended that the concerns over Obama’s citizenship are much ado about nothing.

Factcheck.org, for example, has posted an image described as Obama’s “birth certificate.” But within the image can be seen the words “Certificate of Live Birth,” which is not the same document. In Hawaii at the time Obama was born the state issued a “Certificate of Live Birth” to a parent registering a birth, but it does not indicate the location of the birth.

“FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate,” the group said in a statement accompanying the image of the “Certificate of Live Birth.”

The website Snopes.com also attested to Obama’s U.S. citizenship, citing information from the campaign.

“In Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child’s birth to those who register a birth abroad or one that takes place outside a hospital,” she said.

“There’s the matter that Obama traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, Southern India and Kenya in 1981. He said he went to Indonesia to see his mother. This seemed plausible, except for the fact that his mother returned to Hawaii in August of 1980 to file for a divorce from her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Unless she went back to pal around with the man she divorced, she wasn’t there at the time of Obama’s visit,” Porter wrote.

“There’s another problem. No record of Obama holding an American passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has been found. If he traveled to Pakistan with an American passport, he wouldn’t have been allowed in – since Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and under martial law. It was also on the State Department’s travel ban list for U.S. citizens,” she wrote.

“If he couldn’t get into Pakistan with a U.S. passport, perhaps he went there with an Indonesian passport. But the only way you can get one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen,” she wrote.

All I Can Say Is “UNBELIEVABLE!” We CAN NOT Let This Continue! – jschulmansr

America’s Right blogger and legal writer Jeff Schreiber has followed the case closely.

“There are a number of reasons why the respondents here would choose not to respond,” Schreiber speculated. “First, because the court only grants between 70 and 120 of the 8,000 or so petitions it receives every year, perhaps they just liked their odds of Berg’s petition getting denied. Second, because they have made arguments as to Berg’s lack of standing several times at the district court level and beyond, perhaps they felt as though any arguments had already been made and were available on the record. Or, perhaps the waiver shows that the FEC and other respondents do not take seriously the allegations put forth by Berg, and did not wish to legitimize the claims with a response.”

But one thing that is not clear is whether the FEC is filing for itself or on behalf of all respondents, he added.

FEC attorney Gregory G. Garre is listed as the only name under “Attorneys for Respondents.” There are no additional attorneys listed for Obama or the DNC – and the waiver was filed by “respondents Federal Election Commission, et. al,” suggesting the response was on behalf of other defendants as well.

“As it were, the FEC’s attorney, Gregory Garre, is with the Solicitor General’s office, and does not represent Obama or the DNC,” Schreiber wrote. “While attorneys acting on behalf of a group of defendants or respondents is not necessarily rare, the difference here is the involvement of the Solicitor General’s office, a federal office.”

Court documents show the Federal Election Commission waived its right to respond on Nov. 18.

Berg told America’s Right he was taken aback when he learned that the FEC – a federal regulatory agency – had filed the waiver.

“I’m surprised because I think they should take the position that the Supreme Court should grant standing to us,” he said. “I think they have a responsibility not only to Phil Berg, but to all citizens of this country, to put forth a sense of balance which otherwise doesn’t seem to exist.

“However, if this was filed by the FEC on behalf of the DNC and Barack Obama too, it reeks of collusion,” he said, noting that the attorney from the solicitor general’s office should be representing federal respondents and not the DNC or Obama.

A guru on the “Certification of Live Birth” Barack Obama’s campaign posted online to rebut charges he is ineligible to be president due to the Constitution’s “natural born citizen” requirement says it’s a fake, and further, that such fraud is criminal.

The Obama campaign has told WND such allegations are “garbage,” but Dr. Ron Polarik, who holds a Ph.D. in instructional media specializing in computer technology such as printers, scanners and digital imaging, disagrees. His analyses have been posted online in a YouTube video, which also is embedded here:

He explained to WND his four months of research on the images, including nearly 1,000 test images using actual scans and photographs of real certifcates, reveal there are several “giveaways” on the image itself. For example, the document has gray and white between the lettering, not green pixels as the rest of the background document, suggesting someone cut-and-pasted or typed new information that was embedded on top of the background.

Also, Polarik said although the Obama form has a border and seal from 2008, it purportedly was obtained in 2007. He said the seal does not match seals on other documents from 2007, but does match those from 2008. His full report is posted at Polarik.blogtownhall.com.

In Polarik’s view, there has to be a significant reason for a political candidate and campaign to go to such lengths.

“Obviously, there’s something very critical to hide, or they wouldn’t have spent the million dollars in legal fees to prevent the release of his original birth certificate,” Polarik told WND.

“There’s absolutely something to hide,” he said. “If he was born in Hawaii they would have had a luau that would be continuing today.”Not that the people who voted for him would care,” he said, “but they used this forged document to convince the American voters.

“It’s a scary thought to have someone who essentially begins his presidency as a criminal,” he said, because the use of a faked document as identification is, in fact, a crime, he noted.

“It would be hard to perform as president from behind jail cell door at Leavenworth,” he said.

The video has Polarik’s face and voice disguised and he confirmed in talking with WND that he’s using an assumed name because of the threats he’s reported receiving.

Polarik said the issue of the birth location is a “chink” in Obama’s armor, but the Democrat also has declined to release information about his college years, about his selective service and about his passports, including on what nation’s passport he traveled to Pakistan two decades ago when it was illegal to go there as a U.S. citizen.

“Look, we’re not asking for the world here. Neither is the Constitution. Some pretty basic requirements like being 35 years old, having 14 years residency in the United States, and being a natural born citizen. When Senator John McCain was questioned about it, he showed his birth certificate without hesitating. When Barack Obama was asked by courts including the U.S. Supreme Court, he ducked and hid behind the right to privacy,” she writes.

“Ironically, when Obama was running for the State Senate, he won by disqualifying every candidate who ran against him in the primary, including a guy who had been through a nasty and salacious divorce. Even though he had a small child who could be hurt by the information being made public, a court decided that the public’s right to know; outweighed this poor fella’s right to privacy, and he backed out. Obama clings to the ‘right to privacy’ regarding his own qualifications, just not his opponents.”

She also noted the issue won’t go away, and recommended a visit to ObamaForgery.com to review what’s happening.

“These are the facts,” she wrote. “The Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen. Obama’s grandmother said she was there when Barack was born in Kenya. Obama refuses to release his original birth certificate. Instead of a birth certificate, Obama’s campaign posted a certification given to those born abroad. Experts have called even that document an ‘obvious forgery.'”

“Our Constitution still matters,” she said.

Her group, Faith2Action, is working on funding for the purchase of time for a new television ad on the issue.

In the Philadelphia Bulletin, constitutional lawyer Edwin Vieira said a multitude of problems could result.

“Let’s assume he wasn’t born in the U.S.,” Vieira told the newspaper. “What’s the consequence? He will not be eligible. That means he cannot be elected validly. The people and the Electoral College cannot overcome this and the House of Representatives can’t make him president. So what’s the next step? He takes the oath of office, and assuming he’s aware he’s not a citizen, then it’s a perjured oath.

“He may have nominated people to different positions; he may have nominated people to the judicial branch, who may have been confirmed, they may have gone out on executive duty and done various things,” said Vieira. “The people that he’s put into the judicial branch may have decided cases, and all of that needs to be unzipped.”

“Let’s say we go a year into this process, and it all turns out to be a flim-flam,” he told the newspaper. “What’s the nation’s reaction to that? What’s going to be the reaction in the next U.S. election? God knows. It has almost revolutionary consequences, if you think about it.”

He continued, “[The birth certificate], in theory, should be there. What if it isn’t? Who knows, aside from Mr. Obama? Does Russian intelligence know it isn’t there? Does Chinese intelligence know it isn’t there? Does the CIA know that it isn’t there? Who is in a position to blackmail this fellow?”

Vieira expressed confidence Obama eventually will be forced to produce documentation.

“Let’s assume that an Obama administration passes some of these controversial pieces of legislation he has been promising to go for, like the FOCA (Freedom of Choice) Act,” he told the newspaper. “I would assume that some of those surely will have some severe civil or criminal penalties attached to them for violation. You are now the criminal defendant under this statute, which was passed by an Obama Congress and signed by President Obama. Your defense is that is not a statute because Mr. Obama is not the president. You now have a right and I have never heard this challenged, to subpoena in a criminal case, anyone who has relevant evidence relating to your defenses. And you can subpoena them duces tecum, meaning ‘you shall bring with you the documents.'”

A conference among the justices is scheduled Friday on a New England challenge to Obama’s eligibility.

“The case is brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells, the New Jersey secretary of state, and questions whether Obama is a ‘natural-born citizen’ as required by Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution,” Farah reported.

“It would seem a simple matter to resolve,” he said. “Barack Obama could have put this issue to rest long ago by producing a complete birth certificate from Hawaii. Instead, he has chosen to stonewall the matter, citing a website post of what can only be characterized as a partial representation of a birth certificate – one that has been criticized as a forgery.

“Meanwhile, some of Obama’s own Kenyan relatives claim to have been present at his birth in Mombasa. This controversy, which some have dismissed as frivolous, is as serious as the literal meaning of the Constitution itself.”

The nation’s Electoral College, the process through which Obama is to be formally voted as the next president, will meet Dec. 15, and his inaugural is scheduled Jan. 20.

Meanwhile, more than 125,000 have signed WND’s petition seeking full disclosure of Obama’s information.

The petition cites the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that no one can be sworn into office as president without being a natural born citizen. It also asserts there are questions about Obama’s reported Hawaii birth, that the Democrat has refused repeated calls to document his birth, that activistjudges have declined to require him to shed light on the issue and that Hawaii – at the time of Obama’s birth – allowed parents whose children were born in other locations to register the birth there.

One of the most often asked questions regarding whether or not Barack Obama meets the constitutional requirements for the office of president is: “Why hasn’t the ‘mainstream’ media covered this?” Good question.

Well, one thing we found out in the last election is there isn’t anything “mainstream” about the “mainstream” media. There is no longer any doubt about their pro-Obama bias – even the Washington Post came out and admitted it. If it weren’t for WorldNetDaily, a few radio talk shows and some blogs, we wouldn’t even know about the constitutional crisis we’re in. Interestingly, these are the first things on the chopping block in an unchecked Obama administration.

Look, we’re not asking for the world here. Neither is the Constitution. Some pretty basic requirements like being 35 years old, having 14 years residency in the United States, and being a natural born citizen. When Sen. John McCain was questioned about it, he showed his birth certificate without hesitating. When Barack Obama was asked by courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, he ducked and hid behind the right to privacy.

Ironically, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, he won by disqualifying every candidate who ran against him in the primary, including a guy who had been through a nasty and salacious divorce. Even though he had a small child who could be hurt by the information being made public, a court decided that the public’s “right to know” outweighed this poor fella’s right to privacy, and he backed out. Obama clings to the “right to privacy” regarding his own qualifications, just not his opponents.

The second most-asked question about Obama’s citizenship is: “Don’t you think someone would have found out the answer to these questions before now?” Also an outstanding question. Phil Berg, whose case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, not only filed suit in August but also copied Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean on the matter before Obama was chosen as the nominee. I would have thought that something as important as whether a potential nominee is qualified to serve in office might be worth a question or two prior to the party’s selection. But that information was ignored, and now they’re just hoping it will all go away.

It won’t. Not until Obama comes forward with the proof that the American people want and the Constitution demand.

But what can an ordinary citizen do to defend the Constitution? Instead of sitting on the sidelines wringing our hands, we can do something about it. If the “news” channels won’t cover what may be the biggest story of our lifetime, I say, let’s buy it. Help put this television ad on the air – watch it at ObamaForgery.com:

Heard the rumors about Barack Obama’s citizenship?These are the facts:

The Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen.

Obama’s grandmother said she there when Barack was born in Kenya.

Obama refuses to release his original birth certificate.

Instead of a birth certificate, Obama’s campaign posted a certification given to those born abroad.

Experts have called even that document an “obvious forgery.”

Obama attended school in Indonesia as Barry Soetoro, when only Indonesian citizens were permitted to attend.

Obama’s school records list his father as Lolo Soetoro and Obama’s citizenship as Indonesian.

Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 when it was illegal to enter as a U.S. citizen.

Sixteen lawsuits in 12 states and two cases before the Supreme Court now challenge Obama’s citizenship.

Illuminati Pictures, who produced the video of expert Ron Polarik, produced this ad that raises as many of the facts regarding Obama’s citizenship as one can fit in 60 seconds. Let’s let America hear them and add their voice to the 120,000 who signed the WND petition in the last few days.

Go to http://www.faith2action.org/ and watch the ad. Any Web donation to Faith2Action from now until Dec. 15 will go directly toward airtime to place this ad on television. How much is it going to take? Well, $12,000 buys a national 60-second ad on Fox News between 5 and 6 p.m. I say let’s buy a few of those and publicize it so the rest of the world finally hears about the constitutional crisis we’re in. Then, the Bill O’Reillys, Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs may decide to cover the story of the century.

Our full-page Open Letter to Mr. Obama will be published in the Chicago Tribune on both Monday, December 1, 2008 and Wednesday, December 3, 2008. It will appear in the main news section. Click here to view a copy of the final ad.

Chicago is Mr. Obama’s hometown. His transition team is operating out of the Kluczynski Federal Building in downtown Chicago. He is known to be a regular reader of the Tribune, Chicago’s principal newspaper, with a daily circulation of over a half-million readers.

The Open Letter to Mr. Obama is a formal Petition for a Redress (Remedy) for the alleged violation of the “natural born citizen” clause of the Constitution of the United States of America.Mr. Obama is respectfully requested to direct the Hawaiian officials to provide access to his original birth certificate on December 5-7 by our team of forensic scientists, and to provide additional documentary evidence establishing his citizenship status prior to our Washington, D.C. press conference on December 8.

A First Amendment Petition to any official of the Government for Redress of a violation of the Constitution is substantially different from the garden-variety political petitions frequently received by government officials. This Petition demands it be given the highest priority for an expedited review and official Response by Mr. Obama.

As a formal “Notice of a Constitutional Violation,” the Petition naturally includes the People’s inherent Right to an official Response. As a time-sensitive, election related Petition involving the Office of the President, failure to Respond as requested would constitute an egregious breach of the public trust and confirm the certainty of a Constitutional crisis.

For the D.C. press conference the WTP Foundation has reserved the Edward R. Murrow Room at the National Press Club from 1-4 pm on Monday, December 8, 2008. We are hopeful that C-SPAN may cover what could be a pivotal, historic event.

The Petition for Redress/Open Letter to Mr. Obama is also expected to have a significant impact on the deliberations of the Electoral College as it proceeds toward selection of the U.S. President as provided for by the Constitution.

Many, many thanks to the many individuals who donated the money needed to cover the costs of publishing the Open Letter and conducting the Washington press conference.

We are now in the process of selecting the forensic scientists who would travel to Hawaii to examine Mr. Obama’s original birth certificate (assuming he responds to the Petition for Redress by directing the Hawaiian officials to provide access to the birth certificate). The budget for this task is currently estimated at $20,000. We need to raise the money quickly. Unfortunately, we are starting from zero and we have but one week before the scientists would need to be in Hawaii.

Representing thousands of responsible American citizens who have also taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America,

I am duty bound to call on you to remedy an apparent violation of the Constitution.

Compelling evidence supports the claim that you are barred from holding the Office of President by the “natural born citizen” clause of the U.S. Constitution. For instance:

 You have posted on the Internet an unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited, computer-generated birth form created in 2007, a form that lacks vital information found on any original, hand signed Certificate of Live Birth, such as hospital address, signature of attending physician and age of mother.

 Hawaii Dept of Health will not confirm your assertion that you were born in Hawaii.

 Legal affidavits state you were born in Kenya

 Your grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended your birth in Kenya.

 U.S. Law in effect in 1961 denied U.S. citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.

 In 1965, your mother legally relinquished whatever Kenyan or U.S. citizenship she and you had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen.

You have repeatedly refused to provide evidence of your eligibility when challenged to do so in a number of recent lawsuits. Instead, you have been successful in having judges declare that they are powerless to order you to prove your eligibility to assume the Office of President.

Incredibly, the judge in Hawaii actually said it would be an invasion of your privacy for him to order access to your original birth certificate in order to prove your eligibility to hold the Office of President.

Before you can legitimately exercise any of the powers of the President you must meet all the criteria for eligibility established by the Constitution. You are under a moral, legal, and fiduciary duty to proffer such evidence.

Should you assume the office as anyone but a bona fide natural born citizen of the United States who has not relinquished that citizenship, you would be inviting a national crisis that would undermine the domestic peace and stability of the Nation. For example:

 You would always be viewed by many Americans as a poseur – a usurper .

 As a usurper , you would be unable to take the required “Oath or Affirmation” on January 20 without committing the crime of perjury or false swearing, for being ineligible you cannot faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States.

 You would be entitled to no allegiance, obedience or support from the People.

 The Armed Forces would be under no legal obligation to remain obedient to you.

 No civilian in the Executive Branch would be required to obey any of your proclamations, Executive Orders or directives, as such orders would be legally void.

 Your appointments of Judges to the Supreme Court would be void.

 Congress would not be able to pass any needed legislation because it would not be able to acquire the signature of a bona fide President.

 Congress would be unable to remove you, a usurper , from the Office of the President on Impeachment, inviting certain political chaos including a potential for armed conflicts within the General Government or among the States and the People to effect the removal of such a usurper .

In consideration of the escalating constitutional crisis brought on by the total lack of evidence needed to conclusively establish your eligibility, I am compelled to serve you with this First Amendment Petition for a Redress of this violation of the Constitution. With all due respect, I ask that you immediately direct the appropriate Hawaiian officials to allow access to the vault copy of your birth certificate by our forensic scientists on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, December 5, 6 and 7, 2008.

In addition, I ask that you deliver the following documentary evidence to the National Press Club in Washington DC by 10 am on December 8, 2008, marked for my attention:

 A certified copy of your Oath of Allegiance taken upon age of maturity.

 Certified copies of your admission forms for Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

 Certified copies of any legal documents changing your name.

Each member of the Electoral College, who is committed to casting a vote on December 15, 2008, has a constitutional duty to make certain you are a natural-born citizen. As of today, there is no evidence in the public record (nor have you provided any) that defeats the claim that you are

barred by law from assuming the Office of President because you fail the Constitution’s eligibility requirements.

All state Electors are now on Notice that unless you provide documentary evidence before December 15, that conclusively establishes your eligibility, they cannot cast a vote for you without committing treason to the Constitution.

“In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. ”Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438”

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this urgent matter.

A lawyer who is playing a key role in a California lawsuit urging officials to prevent the state’s 55 Electoral College votes from being recorded for Barack Obama until questions about his citizenship are resolved says he’s organizing plans to challenge, even after the inauguration, every order, every proposal, every piece of paperwork generated by Obama.

“We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time. As long as we have money , we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status,” Gary Kreep, chief of the United States Justice Foundation, told WND today.

“We’re already talking to groups who are willing to be plaintiffs,” he said.

The complaint urges the California secretary of stateto refuse to allow the state’s 55 Electoral College votes to be cast until Obama’s citizenship and related eligibility to hold office is resolved.

It is just one of more than a dozen legal challenges brought forward so far over Obama’s citizenship. The cases all cite Obama’s clouded history and the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural-born” citizen.

There have been allegations he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as his campaign has reported, that he could be considered a British subject because of his father’s residency in what then was a British protectorate that later became Kenya, and that the “Certificate of Live Birth” posted on his website simply shows his mother registered his birth in Hawaii after he was born but does not document a location.

There also have been questions raised about his travels as a youth, including the years he spent registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school, and his later travels to Pakistan at a time when U.S. passports weren’t welcome in that nation.

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists, simply hasn’t ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor’s office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

The California action was filed on behalf of Keyes, as well as Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.

“Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal,” the action challenges.

Kreep told WND today he’s now working with several groups that could serve as plaintiffs to challenge Obama’s actions, even from the Oval Office, should the issue remain in dispute.

“There is a reasonable and common expectation by the voters that to qualify for the ballot, the individuals running for office must meet minimum qualifications as outlined in the federal and state Constitutions and statutes, and that compliance with those minimum qualifications has been confirmed by the officials overseeing the election process,” the complaint said, when in fact the only documentation currently required is a signed statement from the candidate attesting to those qualifications.

Moore had his own constitutional confrontation when he was removed from his position Alabama Supreme Court chief justice after he refused to remove from state grounds a monument recognizing the Ten Commandments as the foundation for U.S. law.

“We can survive four years of any president; we cannot survive without a Constitution,” he told WND. “This calls for a major investigation. Our Constitution is at stake.”

Moore said the requirement for a president to be a natural-born citizen is clear in the Constitution. The document, he added, provides procedures to amend the requirement, but that hasn’t been done.

“We live under the rule of law,” he warned, “If we start ignoring that. …”

A WND reader agreed in a letter to the editor.

“If Obama is allowed to take office without proving his citizenship, then we have no Constitution. America as it’s been will be dead. If an easy to understand rule is ignored, then the others harder to understand will be easy to ignore,” wrote Tony Costello.

Moore said, “If a person is not qualified, he’s not qualified. It doesn’t matter who it is, Republican, Democrat, black or white, rich or poor.”

He added the members of the Electoral College have an obligation to verify Obama’s qualifications before voting for him.

But he said the dispute may end up with court action, too.

“The courts are there to uphold the law. People have a right to change the Constitution. But until then it’s the rule of law,” he said.

“I don’t see any reason a candidate who has such a serious question would not come forward with the truth about where he was born,” Moore said.

“The Supreme Court has to answer this. They have to do it by law and not by the popularity of a person. If we do that, we might as well throw the Constitution out the window,” Moore said.

“[Obama] has the answer. He knows where he was born. If he tells something that’s untrue that’s another matter. It’s not an Obama issue, it’s an American issue. It’s about the Constitution of the United States.”

U.S. State Department officials declined to respond to WND inquiries about the process for keeping a U.S. citizenship while attending schools in Indonesia, or the possibility of a U.S. citizen keeping that status while traveling on another nation’s passport.

But several online “fact” sites have reported that the concerns over Obama’s citizenship are much ado about nothing.

Factcheck.org, for example, has posted an image described as Obama’s “birth certificate.” But within the image can be seen the words “Certificate of Live Birth,” which is not the same document. In Hawaii at the time Obama was born the state would issue a “Certificate of Live Birth” to a parent registering a birth, but it does not indicate the location of the birth.

“FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate,” the group said in a statement accompanying the image of the “Certificate of Live Birth.”

Snopes, also, attested to Obama’s U.S. citizenship, citing information from the campaign itself.

“In Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child’s birth to those who register a birth abroad or one that takes place outside a hospital,” she said.

She cited the work of Ron Polarik, who holds a Ph.D. in instructional media and specializes in computer graphics with over 20 years experience with computers, printers and typewriters.

“Polarik has submitted a signed affidavit and has now released his findings on video at http://www.obamaforgery.com/ with his identity masked and voice altered to guard against the carrying out of threats, which he has already received,” Porter wrote.

“The Summary: The Certificate of Live Birth documents posted on Mr. Obama’s website http://www.fightthesmears.com/, Daily Kos (a pro-Obama blog) and factcheck.org, (a pro-Obama political research group), were found to be altered and forged,” she said.

The researcher cited problems with pixels in the image and a fold line and a blurry border. He asserts the border is a 2007 version while the seal and signature are from 2008.

She also cited issues beyond the birth certificate.

“There’s the matter that Obama traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, Southern India and Kenya in 1981. He said he went to Indonesia to see his mother. This seemed plausible, except for the fact that his mother returned to Hawaii in August of 1980 to file for a divorce from her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Unless she went back to pal around with the man she divorced, she wasn’t there at the time of Obama’s visit,” Porter wrote.

“There’s another problem. No record of Obama holding an American passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has been found. If he traveled to Pakistan with an American passport, he wouldn’t have been allowed in – since Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and under martial law. It was also on the State Department’s travel ban list for U.S. citizens,” she wrote.

“If he couldn’t get into Pakistan with a U.S. passport, perhaps he went there with an Indonesian passport. But the only way you can get one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen,” she wrote.

Porter encouraged residents to contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee with a request to hold congressional hearings and write to the U.S. Supreme Court to request a ruling.

“A child born to an American mother and alien father could be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father.”

Obama’s mother held U.S. citizenship, but his father never did.

WND also reported that Herb Titus, the Constitution Party’s running mate to Howard Phillips in 1996 and recognized authority on the U.S. Constitution, said it is up the electors from the 50 states to make certain Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen before they cast votes for him in the Electoral College Dec. 15.

“If they do their duty, they would make sure that if they cast a vote for Mr. Obama, that Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen,” he told WND.

“I think it should be resolved. The duty is in the Electoral College. Every Obama elector that is committed to casting a vote on the 15th of December, they have a constitutional duty to make certain whether Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen,” he said.

If the electors fail their duty and Obama proves ultimately to fail the eligibility requirement of the U.S. Constitution, there would be only the laborious, contentious and cumbersome process of impeachment available to those who would wish to follow the Constitution, he suggested.

On WND’s new forum page, the level of frustration was rising. Dozens contributed their thoughts immediately after the forum was posted:

“What makes Obama non-respon[sive] to the simplest of requests?” asked one reader. “Does he think that it is politically incorrect to ask for authentication of the myriad of facts about himself … Is he testing the grounds to see how far he can play with this charade?”

Other comments included:

“Obama won his first election ever by getting three Democratic opponents thrown off the ballot? He’s all for using the law to help himself win. Wouldn’t it be ironic if he is not allowed to serve as president due to the law? … Turn around is fair play!

“Even the left-wing liberal news media is beginning to ask the question: ‘Who is this man we have elected? We really do not know much about him.'”

“Obama’s refusal to produce the ORIGINAL given birth certificate gives us all pause. His silence on these allegations is deafening. The anointed one believes that if he can hold us all back until he’s in the Oval Office he’s hit a home run and he’s ‘safe.’ Ah, not so! Check your law, Obama, and you will see that even if were to make it to the White House you will no longer be able to hide behind those red velvet ropes.”

“There must be something that would have caused him great harm prior to the election, and would have stopped him from becoming elected. What could that little piece of information be?”

The media bought it. The voters bought it. And now some in Congress are resisting the idea of congressional hearings because they believe that Barack Obama’s “birth certificate” has been posted online.

Not so.

What was posted was not a birth certificate, but something that resembles a “Certification of Live Birth” or COLB, which, even if authentic, does not prove “natural born” U.S. citizenship. You see, in Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child’s birth to those who register a birth abroad or one that takes place outside a hospital.

It’s Rathergate all over again with more amiss than a 1970s Selectric typewriter. But before I tell you what the experts found, let me ask you a few questions:

If you were a natural born American citizen and had it within your means to quiet all the lawsuits and questions with proof, would you do it?

If you were a natural born American citizen, would you spend thousands of dollars to fight the legal cases against you, or would you simply answer the legitimate question of whether you meet the constitutional requirements for office?

If you were a natural born American citizen, would you forge a document called a “Certification of Live Birth” and tell the public it was a real “birth certificate”?

If someone were to violate the law by manufacturing a forgery in order trick the public, would that be enough evidence for members of Congress to conduct hearings and for a court to issue an order for the critical records, including the original long-form birth certificate (signed by the doctor) to ensure that the U.S. constitutional requirements for office were not violated? After all, Congress is sworn to uphold and defend that Constitution, and the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are “guardians” of the Constitution. That’s their job, isn’t it?

Ron Polarik, who holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Media and specializes in computer graphics with over 20 years experience with computers, printers and typewriters, has come forth with more definitive evidence than the word processor that tried to simulate a 1970s Selectric typewriter.

Polarik has submitted a signed affidavit and has now released his findings on video at http://www.obamaforgery.com/ with his identity masked and voice altered to guard against the carrying out of threats, which he has already received.

Just Received Into my Emailbox- YOU MUST READ THIS TOO!

From: GOPUSA [mailto:eagle@gopusamedia.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 12:59 PM
To: jschulmansr
Subject: Team Obama Calls Birth Cert. Request Garbage
— The following e-mail comes from one of our sponsoring advertisers. Through their support, GOPUSA can continue to bring you the best array of conservative news, information, commentary, and discussions.
Source: UNITED STATES JUSTICE FOUNDATION

Team Obama:”All I can tell you is that it is just pure garbage.”

According to the WorldNetDaily headline above, that was the retort of an Obama campaign spokesperson when asked about complaints requesting that Senator Obama produce a valid Birth Certificate to prove that he is constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States.

Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States, states, “No person except a natural born citizen of the United States, at the time of adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President.”

The Constitution of the United States is NOT “garbage” and furthermore, securing the rights of the people under the Constitution is NOT “garbage”!

The Obama campaign’s response is an elitist, condescending slap in the face to patriotic Americans. No one is above the law and Team Obama cannot make the question of Obama’s eligibility go away by disrespecting the American people – and, by inference, the Constitution of the United States.

That’s why we just filed an action that Senator Obama will not be able to ignore… an action that WILL NOT GO AWAY!

In fact, in my humble opinion… we will ONLY “LOSE” if we do NOT have the resources we need to carry on for as long as it takes, and we will “win” as long as we can carry on this fight (more on that later).

The Obama campaign has a crack team of high-priced law firms – that’s not three lawyers but THREE LAW FIRMS – that will use every means that money! can buy to fight this action. We’re relying on you and patriotic Americans like you.

Why The “Berg Case” Is Dead In The Water And Why USJF Will Succeed…

You probably already know that Pennsylvania attorney Philip J. Berg filed a suit in U.S. District Court several months back contending that Senator Obama is not a “natural-born” citizen.

And you probably already know that the court dismissed the suit claiming that Berg, as a private citizen, “lacked standing to bring the case.”

Of course, Berg is not the only one who has filed an action and the “Berg Case” is not the only one in which the courts have relied upon the lack-of-standing technicality.

Washington State Superior Court Judge John Erlick dismissed yet another suit ruling that even the Secretary of State did not have authority to inquire about Senator Obama’s birth certificate.

Can you believe it? What’s going on? Well, perhaps Berg said it best;
“This is a question of who has standing to uphold our Constitution. If I don’t have standing, if you don’t have standing, if your neighbor doesn’t have standing to question the eligibility of an individual to be president of the United States — the commander in chief, the most powerful person in the world — then who does?”

Of course, Berg’s statement also illustrates why the “Berg Case” and some of these other actions are doomed to fail and why we believe our action WILL succeed!

Simply stated, the lack-of-standing argument is already out there. Yes, it’s egregious but the all too sad reality is that judges will continue to grab onto it like a life-preserver now that it has been put into play… the die has ! been cast!

We state in the Petition we just filed with the court:
“The parties in this case have standing to bring this litigation, due to the fact that Dr. Keyes and Dr. Drake, Sr., are candidates on the California ballot for President and Vice President of the United States, and Mr. Robinson is an Elector for the Keyes-Drake ticket, and Vice Chairman of America’s Independent Party, of Fenton, Michigan, which nominated Dr. Keyes for President. He is also a Chairman of the American Independent Party (California), which nominated Dr. Keyes and Dr. Drake for President and Vice President, respectively. Based on the foregoing, it is imperative for SOS to be provided proof that Senator Obama is a ‘natural born’ citizen.”

Alan Keyes and Wiley Drake were actually on the ballot in California and Markham Robinson is an Elector for Keyes-Drake. If they don’t have standing, one would be hard-pressed to find ANY! ONE who has standing and if the court attempts to use the lack-of-standing argument, it’s an implied admission that NO ONE has standing to enforce the Constitution!

The Usurper-in-Chief…

Now… a dose of reality. Frankly, a case of this magnitude could be in the courts for years. There are no quick solutions… BUT THAT’S OKAY.

The key is in the following statement which also appears in the Petition:

“Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of! the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void , Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that an usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal.”

Part of that statement bears repeating:

“… none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal.”

In other words, as long as this case is in the courts, a cloud hangs over Senator Obama’s head and for the sake of our Constitution and our Republic, the issue MUST be resolved!

If President Obama issues an Executive Order to rescind the Mexico City Policy and allows the tax dollars of Americans to fund orga! nizations that promote abortions overseas, the door to question the legitimacy of that Executive Order remains open.

If President Obama signs a treaty with an unfriendly power or an agreement with the United Nations, the door to question the legitimacy of that treaty remains open.

If President Obama signs a bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens into law, the door to question the legitimacy of that law remains open.

If President Obama appoints new Commissioners to the Federal Communications! Commission (FCC) who bring back the so-called Fairness Do ctrine, the door to question those appointments and the legitimacy of the actions taken by his appointees remains open.

That’s not to say that he can’t or won’t be able to fulfill the duties of his office, but until this matter is resolved… until he can validate that he is constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States, the door will always remain open to question and challenge the legitimacy of his actions and the dire consequences of those actions.

In short… as long as we have the resources to fight, we’re ahead of the game!

That’s where you come in.
The United States Justice Foundation (USJF) is a nonprofit public interest, legal action organization and has been your conservative voice in the courts since 1979. And since USJF is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, your generous assistance is also TAX DEDUCTIBLE!

You can use this link or the hyperlink below to help – it’s TAX DEDUCTIBLE. Is it worth a TAX DEDUCTIBLE effort of $5000 or $2500 or even $100 or $50 or $25 to defend the Constitution and the integrity of our electoral process?

The Obama campaign has a crack team of high-priced law firms – that’s not three lawyers but THREE LAW FIRMS – that will use every means that money! can buy to fight this action. We’re relying on you and patriotic Americans like you.

We handled litigation against Hillary Clinton for campaign finance fraud in her 2000 Senate race.

We’ve submitted testimony before the United States Senate on Supreme Court appointees.

But all that won’t really matter. It won’t matter which side has the most skilled attorneys. Talent, competence and experience do not assure victory.

Here’s the bottom line.

Team Obama presently has THREE LAW FIRMS at its disposal – and a seemingly unlimited ability to raise funds from the far-left for more legal help.

This potentially translat! es to hundreds of attorneys and law clerks who can literally throw paperwork at us until we crack under the sheer pressure and cry uncle.

Team Obama WILL try to wear us down (which by the way is yet another reason why the “Berg Case” and many of the others – as mentioned earlier – are doomed to fail and why we CAN get the job done).

They’ll stall and delay and throw paperwork at us so fast, so furiously and for so long… then they’ll wait for us to break under the strain and give up. Or so they think…

Team Obama doesn’t fear our skill or the merits of our case.

The ONLY THING THEY FEAR IS YOU!

They hope and pray that you will not support our efforts or that! you will grow tired of the fight. What they fear most is that you will join us and support our efforts!

They know that if you support us, we’ll have the ability to take on additional clerical and research staff, cover court fees, file briefs and take on outside counsel on an as-needed basis.

That’s why they’re praying you don’t help us… but we’re praying that you do!

USJF wasn’t approached by a group of hot-shot movers and shakers. We took on this burden because like you we love this great country and we REFUSE to stand idly by while the Left disrespects the Constitution, the American people and our electoral process.

USJF is a nonprofit public interest, legal action organization. We go where others fear to tread. We’re adept at taking on vastly superior forces. And we’re committed to hitting the trenches on this one and will! ing to get bloody if we must.

That’s our promise to you.

But, in the end, our commitment and our “pit-bull” determination doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Winning or losing is NOT in our control… and it’s not in Team Obama’s control… IT’S IN YOUR HANDS!

A lot of folks are very angry over Barack Obama’s refusal to validate his eligibility to be President of the United States.

Is it worth a TAX DEDUCTIBLE effort of $5000 or $2500 or even $100 or $50 or $25 to defend the Constitution, the rights of Patriotic Americans under the Constitution and the integrity of our electoral process?

Is it worth forwarding this e-mail to ! your family and friends with a personal note asking them to join the f ight?

The choice is now up to you.

Please help us and after helping us, please forward this e-mail to everyone in your address book.

We’re in… how about you?
The United States Justice Foundation (USJF) is a nonprofit public interest, legal action organization and has been your conservative voice in the courts since 1979. And since USJF is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, your generous assistance is also TAX DEDUCTIBLE!

You can use this link or the hyperlink below to help – it’s TAX DEDUCTIBLE. Is it worth a TAX DEDUCTIBLE effort of $5000 or $2500 or even $100 or $50 or $25 to defend the Constitution and the integrity of our electoral process?

The Obama campaign has a crack team of high-priced law firms – that’s not three lawyers but THREE LAW FIRMS – that will use every means that money! can buy to fight this action. We’re relying on you and patriotic Americans like you.

Please use the hyperlink above to make your best TAX-DEDUCTIBLE effort to be a part of this battle.

In His Service

Gary Kreep, Executive Director
United States Justice Foundation

My Note – I made a donation and hope you will join me!!!

jschulmansr

The Summary: The Certificate of Live Birth documents posted on Mr. Obama’s website http://www.fightthesmears.com/, Daily Kos (a pro-Obama blog) and factcheck.org, (a pro-Obama political research group), were found to be altered and forged.

The problem of the pixels: When you have a green patterned document such as this, there should be a lot of green pixels from the background showing up between the letters that appear on the certification. But in this case, instead of green pixels, there are white and grey pixels between the letters, which result when you replace existing text with other text.

There is no second fold line. The pictures show two folds – necessary to fit any COLB into an envelope for mailing, but the document itself shows only one fold. This is another indication of document alteration.

There’s a blurred border. The border has a lower resolution than the rest of the document, which is another indication that it has been altered.

The border is one that is used in 2007 COLBs. As a security measure, Hawaii changes their borders every year. This is when the Obama campaign claims the certificate was obtained. That is fine except for the problem that …

The seal and signature stamp are from a 2008 COLB. As revealed by a process called edging, the Hawaiian seal and signature stamp on the back of the document are revealed to be from the wrong year!

Like with Rathergate, when you’re creating documents, make sure you use only a typewriter that was invented at the time you report the document was manufactured. When posting a “Certification of Live Birth,” make sure you “borrow” only from documents used in the same year!

But beyond the birth certificate issue, there’s the matter that Obama traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, Southern India and Kenya in 1981. He said he went to Indonesia to see his mother. This seemed plausible, except for the fact that his mother returned to Hawaii in August of 1980 to file for a divorce from her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Unless she went back to pal around with the man she divorced, she wasn’t there at the time of Obama’s visit.

There’s another problem. No record of Obama holding an American passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has been found. If he traveled to Pakistan with an American passport, he wouldn’t have been allowed in – since Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and under martial law. It was also on the State Department’s travel ban list for U.S. citizens.

If he couldn’t get into Pakistan with a U.S. passport, perhaps he went there with an Indonesian passport. But the only way you can get one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen.

That’s quite possible since under Indonesian law, when a male acknowledges a child as his son, it deems the son – in this case Obama – to be an Indonesian state citizen, which was also recorded by Obama’s school record.

So, if he didn’t go to Indonesia in 1981 to visit mom (who had returned to Hawaii by then), might it have something to do with the fact that Indonesian passports expire every five years and it was time for renewal?

Why does that matter?

If Obama would have been a U.S. citizen, 8 USC §1481(a)(2) provides loss of nationality by native born citizens upon “taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state … after having attained the age of eighteen years,” in violation of 8 U.S.C. §1401(a)(1). Simply put, since Indonesia did not allow for dual citizenship, if Obama got that passport in 1981, when he was 20 years old, he effectively renounced any U.S. citizenship he may have had.

So, if the experts are right, Obama forged a Certification of Live Birth to fool America. In addition to the automatic Indonesian citizenship granted to a child acknowledged as a “son” by an Indonesian male citizen, and the Indonesian citizenship listed in Obama’s school records, Obama then traveled to a place where Americans weren’t allowed to go, but citizens of Indonesia were. If he obtained an Indonesian passport on his trip in 1981, he effectively renounced any American citizenship he may have had and cannot serve as president (or “rule” as president, as members of his campaign have stated). These are serious questions that must have answers.

If Obama gets into office without verification that he has met the requirements of the U.S. Constitution, if you care about life, liberty or the family, you’re going to have to make hundreds of calls to try and fight an agenda that seeks to silence you.

There is a way to help prevent this. Our founders sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. I’m asking you to do three things.

Fast and pray for all the hidden things to come to light.

Call the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee – in their district offices while they’re home this week for Thanksgiving. Ask them to “Please hold congressional hearings to investigate whether Barack Obama meets the basic constitutional requirements for the highest office of the land.”

Write a letter to the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court (names are listed below) and put them in a FedEx (or other overnight) envelope to:U.S. Supreme Court
1 First Street, N.E
Washington, D.C. 20543

Our Constitution matters and defending it is going to take an outcry from the public. The electors vote on Dec. 15. The numbers are below and your immediate action is critically needed right now. Do it before defending our liberties costs a lot more than making some phone calls and writing a few letters.

The Republican House Judiciary members: Call them at 202-225-3121, AND most importantly reach them in their district offices:

So much for his upcoming oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

Barack Hussein Obama is still refusing to disclose to the American public something as innocent and as basic as his full, undoctored birth certificate to establish beyond any shadow of a doubt – and that doubt is growing daily – that he is a natural-born American citizen.

Ironically, now that the election is over, the pressure is building. A few bold members of Congress are getting interested in demanding hearings on the issue. The lawsuits are increasing. More pundits and activists are beginning to mobilize.

I, too, am raising the stakes.

Beginning today, I am personally sponsoring a petition campaign right here at this Internet news source, to all controlling legal authorities to determine Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency under Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution and to use all of their persuasive powers to make this information freely available to the rulers of this country – we the people.

I also pledge that this news organization will continue to pursue its own independent investigation as aggressively as it possible can.

To date, here is what we have done:

Dispatched senior staff reporter Jerome Corsi twice to Hawaii to investigate the matter, including an appeal to the governor.

Hired a battery of private investigators in Hawaii to check every hospital for birth records – to no avail.

Sent Corsi to Kenya where he talked with some of Obama’s relatives who clearly recall the birth taking place in Mombasa. (While there, Corsi was detained by Kenyan officials and a press conference he had scheduled was canceled at the last minute at the order of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who has since made clear he has expectations of payback from soon-to-be President Obama.)

I tell you all this because despite the shroud of secrecy over the birth certificate issue, there are some organizations out there insisting it is all a tempest in a teapot – that the issue is settled, that the birth certificate has been released, that Obama has been determined to be eligible by some mystery authority.

One such organization, Factcheck.org, characterizes any who question its assertion that this matter is settled as conspiracy mongers. But, as for me, when it comes to matters as important as the Constitution of the United States, I do not accept the opinion of armchair researchers. Nobody – not one news organization in the world – has devoted more resources to investigating this matter than has WND.

I hope you will now join me in this fight for truth, justice and the American way by signing the petition. Help me spread the word. Let’s turn up the heat. Send this column and the petition far and wide. Share it with your neighbors. Honor the Constitution. Save this country’s most vital institutions and its honor. Seek the truth. Demand accountability.

Time is running out.

The Electoral College is due to convene Dec. 15 – less than a month.

Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the next president Jan. 20 – less than two months from now.

Do you believe the American people have a right to know for certain their next president is constitutionally eligible for the job?

Without a chance to inspect that birth certificate for themselves, do you think we can ever be certain?

If the Constitution is not taken seriously as concerns the eligibility of the president, is it likely to be taken seriously in other matters?

If you don’t take responsibility and initiative on this issue, I am convinced no one else will.

Take your stand for accountability, truth, the rule of law and the Constitution.

PETITION FOR PUBLIC RELEASE OF
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE

To: Electoral College, Congress of the United States, Federal Elections Commission, U.S. Supreme Court, President of the United States, other controlling legal authorities

Whereas, by requirement of the United States Constitution, Section 2, Article 1, no one can be sworn into office as president of the United States without being a natural born citizen;

Whereas, there is sufficient controversy within the citizenry of the United States as to whether presidential election winner Barack Obama was actually born in Hawaii as he claims;

Whereas, Barack Obama has refused repeated calls to release publicly his entire Hawaiian birth certificate, which would include the actual hospital that performed the delivery;

Whereas, lawsuits filed in several states seeking only proof of the basic minimal standard of eligibility have been rebuffed;

Whereas, Hawaii at the time of Obama’s birth allowed births that took place in foreign countries to be registered in Hawaii;

Whereas, concerns that our government is not taking this constitutional question seriously will result in diminished confidence in our system of free and fair elections;

We, the undersigned, assert our rights as citizens of the United States in demanding that the constitutional eligibility requirement be taken seriously and that any and all controlling legal authorities in this matter examine the complete birth certificate of Barack Obama, including the actual city and hospital of birth, and make that document available to the American people for inspection.

My Note: I have been to FactCheck.org (which has direct ties to Obama and the DNC) and read their article re Obama’s Birth Certificate. My questions are still these; if it is true then why doesn’t Obama just produce the Birth Certificate and be done with it? My second question is this why are the “Supreme Court Justices” scheduling a look at the case and if you read all 3 articles below and if the birth certificate exists, and is a valid and legitimate legal document; why are there so many lawsuits pending even from Democrats? Show us the “proof” Obama – Show Us the Birth Certificate…

This is a plea for an increase in prayer for the elections. “What?” you ask. “The elections are over!!!” NO, THEY’RE NOT. The absentee ballots and the military votes have not been counted yet. Neither have the fraudulent votes been dealt with (though there’s doubt that they will). The final decision will be made by the Electoral College which has yet to vote. And, perhaps, most importantly, the lawsuits against BO have not been settled. Some of you may be asking, “What lawsuits?” Actually, there are quite a number of lawsuits in several states that have to do with the question about his eligibility to become President of the United States based on citizenship. For the sake of informed intercession, I’m listing the issues below. While I’ve made every effort to ensure that what I write is accurate and easy-to-read/understand, I make no claim to being an “expert” on the matter. I’m simply going to give enough to make you realize that this is very serious. My purpose is to stir up prayer – not problems so please don’t blast me if you don’t like what I write.

1. The US Constitution requires that the President of the United States be a natural born citizen. Therefore, before running for this office, all 43 previous presidents have had no problem with producing their birth certificates to prove eligibility. For some reason, Obama does not wish to comply with this simple requirement. This has resulted in many unanswered questions and much confusion.

2. Obama claimed to have placed his “original” birth certificate on the Internet. However, after author/editor/internet columnist Andy Martin filed a lawsuit, the Hawaii government confirmed that officials had examined the original, typewritten 1961 document, and confirmed that the document released by the Obama campaign was a facsimile, not the original.

3. On October 31 the State of Hawaii backed Martin’s assertion that there was an original, “typewritten, 1961” birth certificate, called a “Certificate of Live Birth” or “COLB” in Hawaii, that no one had previously seen. This certificate is not the same thing as a Birth Certificate so one still needs to be produced.

4. Hawaii officials refuted Obama’s false assertion.

5. In a Honolulu news conference on October 22nd Martin disclosed that Frank Marshall Davis was the biological father of Barack Obama, not Barack Obama senior as had been previously assumed. The Obama campaign has not denied Martin’s claim. Is this the same “Frank” that news reports talked about being a “father figure” to Obama when he moved back to Hawaii? I don’t know the answer to this question.

6. Frank Marshall Davis was a black Marxist who was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA.

7. Before he was born, BOs mother, Ann Dunham, married Obama, Sr., a Kenyan citizen. Before his birth she was denied entry onto the plane home to Hawaii due to her advanced pregnancy. Therefore, since she was only 18 at the time of Mr. Obama’s birth, she would not have passed citizenship on to her son. This is because, in 1961, citizenship could only be passed on to a child of an alien if the citizen-parent was 19 years old, and had resided in the U.S. for 10 years, five of those over the age of 14. Obviously, his mother did not meet this requirement.

8. Sarah Obama, BO’s Kenyan grandmother has stated on a legally sworn affidavit, which was recorded in her home in Kenya, that she was in the room in Kenya Hospital when Obama was born.

9. An aunt, just “found” two weeks ago living here in the States in poverty under a deportation edict has also stated that he was born in Kenya.

10. When he was six years old, his mother, divorced from Obama Sr, moved to Indonesia and married Lolo Soetoro (Centero), an Indonesian citizen. Obama was evidently adopted by Soetoro and apparently became an Indonesian citizen. His name changed to Barry Soetoro and he was enrolled in an Indonesian school which required citizenship to attend.. His school admission papers have not been released.

11. When Obama was twenty, he went to Pakistan on his Indonesian passport, which indicates that he was a citizen of Indonesia. At the time, Pakistan was a no travel zone for Americans. And, if I remember correctly, Indonesia did not allow duel citizenship until a few years ago.

12. Muammar Gadhafi, leader of Libya, has publicly claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and studied in Moslem schools in Indonesia.

13. In the past, Obama “admitted” to holding citizenship in another country. The U.S. constitution forbids duel citizenship for a president.

14. There are two men who took a law class under Obama who have recently agreed to testify on a legally sworn affidavit that he told the class he was a citizen of Indonesia.

15. Months before the election, Philip J. Berg filed suit against Mr. Obama challenging him to produce his original birth certificate to prove he meets the constitutional requirements to serve as U.S. president.

16. Obama and the Democratic National Committee (which Berg was also suing) failed to produce the papers the court ordered them to. According to Rule # 36 of the Civil Procedure Code, if the charge is not answered, then the parties are assumed guilty.

threw the case out saying Berg was not personally injured by BO so he didn’t have legal standing before the Court, which in lay-man’s terms, means he had no right to bring such a case. Didn’t have the right?!!! Never mind that Berg is a certified lawyer, former PA State Deputy Attorney General with credentials out the kazoo! Doesn’t any American citizen have the right to see that our Constitution is upheld?!
So then, Berg filed a Writ of Certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court late in October, in an effort to force Mr. Obama to produce the documents.

18. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that Mr. Obama, the DNC and all co-defendants are to respond to the writ, on or before Dec. 1.

19. In the meantime, Allen Keys and Wiley Drake have filed a suit in California because, as people who ran for President and VP, they were personally injured by Obama running so their suit can’t be thrown out for the same reason as Berg’s was in Philadelphia.

20. If he, indeed, was a Kenyan or Indonesian citizen but is now a US citizen, where is his Certificate of US Citizenship? When he entered the US from Indonesia, it is assumed that he was granted a Certificate of Naturalization which would allow him to hold a state or federal level political office. But he would not be eligible to become President. Without such a Certificate, he is not even legal to hold the office of Senator. —

21. What is his true citizenship? Why won’t he reveal his true situation and why is the DNC accommodating their candidate?

22. It is noteworthy to understand that Andy Martin is not a fan of John McCain so his efforts are not about political party. Philip Berg is a staunch Democrat and a card-carrying member of the NAACP. Both men simply want to see the Constitution upheld.

23. As of 10/22/2008 there were lawsuits in eight states with lawsuits pending – Hawaii, Washington, California, Florida, Georgia. Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut seeking judicial authority to force the certifying or decertifying of Senator Barack Obama’s qualification for President as a natural born U.S. citizen.

24. Previously, two lawsuits failed to force the certifying documents from Obama. It would all be over if he’d just produce the paperwork!!!! Why won’t he?

25. And why has the media been sitting on this? They would have never allowed it to go this far if he were a Republican.

26. Prayer needs to be made that the Supreme Court act quickly on this case before the inauguration instead of years as is often the way it is with the Supreme Court.

I will readily admit that I deeply resent the fact that he is holding himself above the law and failing to comply with the simplest of requirements. He has said that he intends to change the Constitution of the United States and he is following through with that intention by failing to comply with it himself. Furthermore, I am greatly saddened to see so many intercessors and ministries ignore this very important point, praying as if Obama is already our President. We need their focused and concerted prayers for the resolution of all the lawsuits, the counting of the absentee and military ballots and the Electoral College. We stayed so focused in 2000 and 2004. Why aren’t we now? The election is NOT OVER!!!!!

As James Nesbit, IAPN Southern Il. Hub coordinator said a few days ago, “We still have 60 days to pray this thing down, bind up the spirit of Babylon and defeat it in Rahm Al Capone Emanuel and the chosen Chicago one, before they take over the power to destroy on Jan 20, 2009.”

God has given us time. Let’s get to work!

RaJean

P.S. Here’s a side note. Many are praying for Mr. Obama to have his eyes opened and his heart changed so that he can/will become a Christian. This is very commendable and biblical. But we need to remember that even if/when this happens, he would need TIME to change his thinking, doctrine, habits and influential friends before becoming a godly man capable of leading the free world. On the job training for such a position isn’t God’s best. In response to Israel’s insistence for a king – now! -God changed Saul in a day to become King. But root issues in his heart did not have time to be dealt with so he ended up fighting against the purposes of God.. When the Apostle Paul was converted he tried to jump immediately into ministry and it stirred up such opposition that the brethren sent him off to Tarsus in order to then have peace. (Acts 9:30-31) It took him three years of being willing to be out of the spot light before God deemed him worthy of getting back in there. (Galatians 1:18) And Paul was already well schooled in the Word of God. So as we pray for Obama, let’s make sure our prayers make sense biblically.

Another side note: Here is a quote from George and Jeannie Kirkpatrick for your consideration.

If Obama is not declared a United States born citizen, then several scenarios could happen. Biden could be declared President, or the election could be declared as a fraud, naming McCain as President. Or a new election could be called for. Whatever the case, if Obama is declared ineligible to become President, this could cause riots in every city and state in the union.

The riots that would ensue would make the riots of the ‘60’s look like a picnic. All these events would cause a national emergency, and President Bush could use this national emergency to enact all the executive orders passed over the last thirty years. He would also be able to enact his National Security Presidential Directive signed into law, May 9, 2007. This directive reads:

“New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event,” the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total, unprecedented dictatorial power.”

George Bush would have dictatorial powers over the whole United States. His power would be backed by the U.S. Army, the one million UN troops in this nation, and the use of Canadian armed forces used for crowd control.

The final result would take us into a one-world government. The dollar would be replaced by the Amero, and we would live in a whole, new world.

As God’s people, we need to renew our relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ. He is, in reality, our only hope.”

Comments: Please feel free to add yours!

Comment 1 Gospel1951

This is good and it could all be very well true, but since the news media are not all over this and the prince is about to be crown king I don’t see it happening, oh I believe he will not be the legal president but I also know there are two many out their who want power in the DNC and have too much influence in our courts for this to go anywhere …. they will not give up their power now …. so this will all be swept under the nearest rug or deposited in the nearest grave and covered up…..

Comment 2 Jschulmansr

This could all be cleared up by Barak Obama producing his real genuine Birth Certificate

Incredibly, we are just nine weeks away from inaugurating the next president of the United Statesand millions of Americans still have citizenship eligibility questions that have never been addressed by Barack Obama and his entourage.

All that Barack Obamawould have to do to put this issue to rest is to release his complete birth certificate, revealing where he was born and who were his parents.

It seems a simple thing.

Personally, I doubt the Democratic Party would be so stupid as to run an ineligible candidate for president of the United States. I doubt Hillary Clinton would have accepted defeat at the hands of a candidate ineligible for the job.

Maybe his intransigence on this seemingly ridiculous matter is just his way of showing he will, as president, consider himself above the Constitution. I don’t know any other way to interpret his behavior, do you?

Obama’s record of non-cooperation and secrecy has now resulted in conspiracy theories that will plague him throughout his administration if he doesn’t address them now with utter transparence. Do I expect him to do so? No, I don’t.

He not only thinks those lawsuits are “garbage,” evidently that’s also what he thinks of the people who truly believe the Constitution means what it says and those who believe there ought to be some controlling legal authority determining Obama’s eligibility for the highest office in the land before he is sworn in Jan. 20.

Count me among those who really want to see that birth certificate now.

Imagine the level of secrecy we can expect from an Obama administration that guards his birth certificate with such tenacity.

I’m calling on Barack Obama today to release the entire birth certificate. And just so there is no mistake about what I am calling for, I want the part of the birth certificate that shows which hospital he was born in and who his parents were. That is the only way to establish if he is truly a natural-born citizen. Further, I am asking as a journalist and pundit that if there is any government agency or government official anywhere on the planet who has inspected the birth certificate and can provide those details to the American people, the time to do so is now.

I’m also calling on all my colleagues, from coast to coast and around the world, not to let this matter drop. Apparently it is a point of real sensitivity with Obama people. Good. Let’s rub it in. Let’s demand he produce the birth certificate at every turn – at every press conference, at every appearance, on every talk show.

Could anything be more important than enforcing the requirements of our Constitution?

This is hardly a laughing matter. The longer this soap opera drags on, the more suspicions it will raise – the less credibility our electoral system will have, the more many people will believe the whole political system is rigged.

Whom does that benefit?

I honestly can’t imagine.

What possible motivation could Obama have for not producing this simple, innocuous document that every citizen must produce to get a passport, driver’s license or Social Security card?

A case that challenges President-elect Barack Obama’sname on the 2008 election ballot citing questions over his citizenship has been scheduled for a “conference” at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conferences are private meetings of the justices at which they review cases and decide which ones to accept for formal review. This case is set for a conference Dec. 5, just 10 days before the Electoral College is scheduled to meet to make formal the election of Obama as the nation’s next president.

The Supreme Court’s website listed the date for the case brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells, the secretary of state in New Jersey, over not only Obama’s name on the 2008 election ballot but those of two others, Sen. John McCain and Roger Calero

The case, unsuccessful at the state level, had been submitted to Justice David Souter, who rejected it. The case then was resubmitted to Justice Clarence Thomas. The next line on the court’s docket says: “DISTRIBUTED for Conference of December 5, 2008.”

If four of the nine justices vote to hear the case in full, oral argument may be scheduled.

The action questions whether any of the three candidates is qualified under the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen.”

His report said the Federal Election Commission now has waived its right to respond to a complaint brought by attorney Philip Berg.

“There are a number of reasons why the respondents here would choose not to respond. First, because the court only grants between 70 and 120 of the 8,000 or so petitions it receives every year, perhaps they just liked their odds of Berg’s petition getting denied. Second, because they have made arguments as to Berg’s lack of standing several times at the district court level and beyond, perhaps they felt as though any arguments had already been made and were available on the record. Or, perhaps the waiver shows that the FEC and other respondents do not take seriously the allegations put forth by Berg, and did not wish to legitimize the claims with a response,” the blogger speculated.

“Another thing which is not completely clear is whether the FEC is filing for itself or on behalf of all respondents,” he added.

“If it were just the FEC filing the waiver, I must say that I’m surprised,” Berg told America’s Right. “I’m surprised because I think they should take the position that the Supreme Court should grant standing to us. I think they have a responsibility not only to Phil Berg, but to all citizens of this country, to put forth a sense of balance which otherwise doesn’t seem to exist.

“However, if this was filed by the FEC on behalf of the DNC and Barack Obama too, it reeks of collusion,” he said, noting that the attorney from the Solicitor General’s office should be representing federal respondents and not the DNC or Obama.

But he noted that “questions surrounding this aspect of Obama’s candidacy are seemingly beginning to see the light of day.”

Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others filed a court petition in California asking the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state’s 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office.

The disputes all cite “natural-born citizen” requirement set by the U.S. Constitution.

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, simply hasn’t ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor’s office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born. There have been other allegations that Obama actually was born in Kenya during a time when his father was a British subject.

The California action was filed by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation on behalf of Keyes, the presidential candidate of the American Independent Party, along with Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.

“Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal,” the action challenges.

The popular vote Nov. 4 favored Obama over Sen. John McCain by several percentage points. But because of the distribution of the votes, Obama is projected to take the Electoral College vote, when it is held in December, by a 2-to-1 margin.

The California case states, “There is a reasonable and common expectation by the voters that to qualify for the ballot, the individuals running for office must meet minimum qualifications as outlined in the federal and state Constitutions and statutes, and that compliance with those minimum qualifications has been confirmed by the officials overseeing the election process,” the complaint said, when in fact the only documentation currently required is a signed statement from the candidate attesting to those qualifications.

“Since [the secretary of state] has, as its core, the mission of certifying and establishing the validity of the election process, this writ seeks a Court Order barring SOS from certifying the California Electors until documentary proof that Senator Obama is a ‘natural born’ citizen of the United States of America is received by her,” the document said.

“This proof could include items such as his original birth certificate, showing the name of the hospital and the name and the signature of the doctor, all of his passports with immigration stamps, and verification from the governments where the candidate has resided, verifying that he did not, and does not, hold citizenship of these countries, and any other documents that certify an individual’s citizenship and/or qualification for office.

The “certificate of live birth” posted by the Obama campaign cannot be viewed as authoritative, the case alleges.

“Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence,” the document said. “The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama’s original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him.”

The case also raises the circumstances of Obama’s time during his youth in Indonesia, where he was listed as having Indonesian citizenship. Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship, raising the possibility of Obama’s mother having given up his U.S. citizenship.

Any subsequent U.S. citizenship then, the case claims, would be “naturalized,” not “natural-born.”

WND has reported other challenges that have been raised in Ohio, Connecticut, Washington, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Hawaii.

Your new employer requests a Social Security number he can provide the Internal Revenue Service so the federal government can be sure to grab its share of your money before you ever get a chance to touch it or see it, let alone spend it. Just explain that it would be an invasion of your privacy to give it to the company for identification purposes because your Social Security number was never intended for that purpose by act of Congress.

See if you get that job.

Better yet, all you illegal aliens out there, apply for any high-security government job. When the agency asks you to prove your citizenship

At that point, those who subscribe to the theory that we have a “living Constitution,” one that means different things to different people at different times in history, will have experienced their crowning achievement – the induction of a president whose very eligibility for the office is questioned by millions of Americans who are told they don’t have any standing in courts to demand actual proof.

There are only three plausible explanations, I have been able to come up with, as to why Barack Obama steadfastly refuses to produce the portion of his alleged Hawaiian birth certificate that actually shows where he was born and when:

He doesn’t want to do so because he deliberately seeks to undermine the specific constitutional requirement.

He has something else to hide that would be revealed by making this document public – perhaps.

He can’t because it would show conclusively he was not born in a Hawaiian hospital.

Can anyone think of another reason?

I’ve put that challenge out there for millions of readers and not one has provided another possibility.

Yet, here we are – and here we go.

Personally, I think Barack Obama can establish his eligibility to be president. At the end of the day, I think we’ll learn the truth. But, in the meantime, the man likely to become the next president is sure providing a lousy example of openness, leadership and citizenship for the rest of us.

There’s just two months left before we witness one of the gravest attacks ever on the literal meaning of the U.S. Constitution.

Tell them: “I’m following the example of President-elect Barack Obama. If he didn’t need to produce a birth certificate to establish his eligibility to be president of the United States, surely you cannot require me to produce a Social Security card to be employed.”

Isn’t it fitting that a so-called “constitutional scholar” – a former law professor – will be the one to deliver this fateful blow?

A long and deep recession, possibly a depression is being forecast across a broad front. But the real picture is different. Governments and central banks are not only committed to doing all in their power to resurrect growth and give their different economies ‘traction’ but have begun the vigorous implementation of reflation. They will do “whatever it takes” to get growth and confidence re-established globally. In essence, the crisis appeared quickly and devastatingly out of greedy lending by banks loaning to uncreditworthy individuals on a broad front. It has to be rectified just as quickly because banks control the lifeblood of liquidity in the economy and they will place their financial health well before that of the broad economy and their customers. They have been saved by central banks to date, but it is resumption of growth and confidence, not healthy banks, that must be achieved first. In the major economic blocs of the world actions are underway, to differing degrees, to force the banks to lend or be bypassed, so that the damage they can inflict on growth, through congealed debt and their instruments, is neutralized. The banks have made it opaquely clear, that they will not lend in such a way as to rectify the underlying crises of a dropping housing market and its ‘ripple’ effects on consumer spending. Governments do see banks as an obstacle to the resuscitation of growth and confidence, so their powerful influence over the state of the economy has to be reduced considerably before this can be done. And it has to be done before any semblance of recovery can be achieved again. The longer the process takes the more difficult and lengthy the solution will be.

Just take a look at the world’s three main economic bloc’s efforts at stimulating growth again:-

China said it would spend an estimated $586 billion over the next two years, roughly 7% of its gross domestic product each year, to construct new railways, subways and airports and to rebuild communities devastated by the May 2008 earthquake in the southwest. Their reasoning is as follows, “Over the past two months, the global financial crisis has been intensifying daily,” the State Council said. “In expanding investment, we must be fast and heavy-handed.” But in China, much of the capital for infrastructure improvements comes not from central and local governments, but from state banks and state-owned companies that are told to expand more rapidly. China maintains far more control over investment trends than the U.S. does, so they can unleash investments to counter a sharp downturn. The Chinese government said the stimulus would cover 10 areas, including low-income housing, electricity, water, rural infrastructure and projects aimed at environmental protection and technological innovation, all of which could incite consumer spending and bolster the economy. The State Council said the new spending would begin immediately, with $18 billion scheduled for the last quarter of this year. In addition, China has already announced a drastic increase of the minimum purchasing price for wheat from next year, by as much as 15.3%. There is also going to be a substantial increase of the purchasing prices for rice, said the National Development and Reform Commission. In the meantime, they also announced plans to stabilize prices for fertilizers and other agricultural means of production, to ensure that the grain price increase will not be eaten away by input making the price increases real income gains for farmers. This will shore up domestic demand and head off any social unrest in the rapidly growing economy. The government there sees its task to harness all sides of the economy to produce growth while they pull their 1.4 billion people out of poverty. Their recent history confirms their ability to succeed!

In Europe, with a more Socialist environment than the U.S.A., [meaning greater central government control over the economy], we believe that after bailing out so many European banks, a very heavy pressure will be put on banks to vigorously lend down to street level again. President Sarkozy’s threat to seize banks that don’t lend gives meat to this forecast. In Britain, nationalization lies ahead of suffering banks and the end of senior executive careers, if they don’t lend freely. Despite the lack of the same effective management [ignoring politics and commerce and other capitalist principles] of the economy in Europe as in China, governments will act in the same way as the Chinese are, eventually, to make growth and confidence happen again. They are committed to this, at last. So 2009 will be the year of reflation in the face of deflation.

In the U.S.A., such synthesis of national institutions in fighting deflation is unlikely as the cooperation of banking, commerce, etc to focus on the underlying economic crisis would barge into so many valued principles fought for, over time. However, we have no doubt that the intransigence of such principles in the face of a decaying economy will produce overwhelming pressures on the system to revitalize the consumer and restore his spending. The government has now seen the banks follow the “profit and prudence” principles after their bailouts and their holding back on lending to safeguard themselves, first. Secretary Paulson has now faced off with them and redirected efforts to make government provided financial relief go direct to the consumer. But he is only at the beginning of this process, which must be across the entire spectrum of consumers, not simply a portion of clients of the largest mortgage providers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Indeed, the slow nature of this solution as it wends its way through political and financial obstacles, could produce a near revolutionary climate, until sufficient action is taken to re-finance the economy from consumer upwards. After all, day-by-day, solid U.S. citizens are being impoverished by the financial sector problems, not their own. As slow as the pace of support becomes, the more degenerative impact it will have on uncertainty and confidence. We have no doubt that 2009 will be remembered as the year of reflation in the face of deflation. Already, house-owning households are likely to receive direct financial aid, if their mortgages are more than 38% of income. If this is applied to all U.S. households in this position we fully expect to see hope lead to confidence, then spending, then growth. These and the suggested support of the consumer on car finance and credit cards will re-kindle spending and the economy. Such moves must convince the U.S. consumer and stop him thinking like a victim. [In the Depression of the early thirties the U.S. used, as part of its battery of tactics, paying people to dig holes and fill them in again, just to get money flowing from ground level up]. This can be implemented in the next few months and impact on the broad economy by the end of the first half of 2009, if applied properly, as government implies it wants to. If it is, then the first 100 days of President Obama will indeed be a honeymoon.

The Importance of Growth

Mr. Ben Bernanke and the governments of the U.S., the Eurozone and China have recognized in no uncertain way that confidence must be regained before growth gains traction and becomes self-sustaining. It appears that they have got the message now and will do whatever it takes to ensure the credit crisis is replaced by confidence in credit. That the banks should suffer for their indiscreet past behavior is just, for a lender should carry the same risk as a borrower.

Inflation and Gold and Silver Prices

Reflation is vigorously being implemented across the globe, but inevitably it will come with inflation. It is impossible to say just how much money needs to be printed to counter deflation, but for sure it will be more than needed and will keep flowing until the financial sun is shining again. 2009 will probably not see inflation rise to dangerous levels, because of its absorption by deflation. But as the money fills deflationary holes, it will spread far and wide and eat into the value of debt, so bringing relief to troubled debtors in addition to direct governmental support. This will be found to be politically acceptable and will delay, if not remove, the pernicious impact of bad debt that we are seeing now. Growth and confidence are considerably more important problems than inflation. Banks have been given debt relief already and so will the consumer, because that is the only solution to the credit crunch. It will be accompanied by the cheapening of money, leading to far higher gold and silver prices than we are even contemplating now. As this is slowly realized by an ever-widening audience across the globe, gold will re-enter the mainstream of investments as an anchor to monetary values if only at individual levels. Thereafter institutions and perhaps central banks, will appreciate it fully?

Governments have to act very fast to stop the confidence-eating impact of deflation from becoming a way of life, just as borrowing was, over the last thirty years. Consequently expect global stimulation to be put in place before the end of the first quarter of 2009. In that time we fully expect forced selling of all assets to slow to a trickle. Thereafter a positive tone will benefit gold and silver in the long-term, as well as short-term.

Let’s be clear though, there is no historic precedent to what we are about to see.

We expect gold to thrive in an atmosphere of hope, against a threatening backdrop, with the gold price realistically discounting the diminishing buying power of paper currencies.

Gold Forecaster regularly covers all fundamental and Technical aspects of the gold price in the weekly newsletter. To subscribe, please visit www.GoldForecaster.com

Legal Notice / Disclaimer:
This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. Gold Forecaster – Global Watch / Julian D. W. Phillips / Peter Spina, have based this document on information obtained from sources it believes to be reliable but which it has not independently verified; Gold Forecaster – Global Watch / Julian D. W. Phillips / Peter Spina make no guarantee, representation or warranty and accepts no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of Gold Forecaster – Global Watch / Julian D. W. Phillips / Peter Spina only and are subject to change without notice. Gold Forecaster – Global Watch / Julian D. W. Phillips / Peter Spina assume no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance, correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion or statement contained herein or any omission. Furthermore, we assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use and existence of the information, provided within this Report.

ABC, CBS and NBC Provide Zero Coverage of Effort to Control Media Content and Extinguish Talk Radio

Barack Obama’s transition team has tapped former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, a longtime proponent of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” to head the team looking for the man or woman who will soon give Democrats a 3-to-2 advantage on the Federal Communications Commission.

It’s another troubling sign that Democrats are serious about trying to reinstate the long-defunct FCC regulation, which can more aptly be described as the “Censorship Doctrine” because of its chilling effect on free speech. In effect from 1949 to 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was an obstacle to open discussion of public policy issues on the radio; its removal in the Reagan years spawned the robust talk radio marketplace of ideas now enjoyed by millions.

While talk radio hosts often warned during the campaign that free speech could be trampled by an all-Democratic majority, the broadcast networks have failed to react to this dangerous threat to the First Amendment. A review shows the broadcast networks — whose affiliates could also be regulated — have failed to run even a single story mentioning the push for a new Fairness Doctrine. The most recent mention of the Fairness Doctrine was on May 30, 2007, when in an interview on CBS’s The Early Show, Al Gore bizarrely called it a “protection” that was removed during the Reagan years.

But there has been news to report, as Democrats have been more than candid about their plans. On Election Day, for example, New York Senator Charles Schumer justified regulating political speech. “The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC to limit pornography on the air,” Schumer told the Fox News Channel. “You can’t say, ‘government hands off in one area’ to a commercial enterprise, but you’re allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

In late October, Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman told a New Mexico radio station how he “hopes” the Fairness Doctrine returns so radio will be more to his liking: “For many, many years, we operated under a Fairness Doctrine in this country. I think the country was well-served. I think the public discussion was at a higher level and more intelligent in those days than it has become since.”

Democrats have launched various attempts to control of broadcast content since the Fairness Doctrine’s demise in 1987, but the push has become more insistent in the past couple of years. After the failure of a liberal immigration bill in 2007, Senator Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday that she was “looking at” a new Fairness Doctrine because “talk radio tends to be one-sided….It’s explosive. It pushes people to, I think, extreme views without a lot of information.” As with Schumer and Bingaman recently, none of the broadcast networks thought Feinstein’s threats worth reporting.

Journalists aren’t known for turning a blind eye to free speech issues. In 2003, ABC, CBS and NBC ran 33 stories on criticism of the Dixie Chicks for speaking out against President Bush and the Iraq war. ABC’s Jim Wooten darkly warned: “All this has reminded some of the McCarthy Era’s blacklists that barred those even accused of communist sympathies for working in films or on television.”

When Democrats first pushed to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in 1987-88, both the New York Times and Washington Post (see box) came down strongly on the side of free speech. Now that the Left is gearing up to suffocate talk radio, the media’s First Amendment solidarity seems to have been eclipsed by their loyalty to the would-be censors of the Democratic Party. — Rich Noyes

My Comment: Why the Blackout? Could it be they are trying to “stifle” FREE SPEECH without our knowledge? I will keep you updated on this as it progresses- jschulmansr

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to help the nation avoid a constitutional crisis by halting Tuesday’s election until Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama documents his eligibility to run for the top office in the nation.

Democratic attorney Philip Berg had filed a lawsuit alleging Obama is ineligible to be president because of possible birth in Kenya, but as WND reported, a federal judge dismissed the complaint claiming Berg lacks standing to bring the action.

The 34-page memorandum that accompanied the court order from Judge R. Barclay Surrick concluded ordinary citizens can’t sue to ensure that a presidential candidate actually meets the constitutional requirements of the office.

Instead, Surrick said Congress could determine “that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for the Presidency,” but that it would take new laws to grant individual citizens that ability.

“Until that time,” Surrick says, “voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that Plaintiff attempts to bring.”

Berg has maintained that uncertainty about how the U.S. does enforce the requirements of presidency may result in a constitutional crisis should an ineligible candidate win the office.

In a statement today, Berg said he is applying to Justice David Souter for an “Immediate Injunction to Stay the Presidential Election of November 4, 2008.”

“I am hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will grant the injunction pending a review of this case to avoid a constitutional crisis by insisting that Obama produce certified documentation that he is or is not a “natural born” citizen and if he cannot produce documentation that Obama be removed from the ballot for president,” Berg said.

“We must legally prevent Obama, the unqualified candidate, from taking the office of the presidency of the United States,” Berg said.

“This is a question of who has standing to stand up for our Constitution,” Berg told Jeff Schreiber of America’s Right blog. “If I don’t have standing, if you don’t have standing, if your neighbor doesn’t have standing to ask whether or not the likely next president of the United States – the most powerful man in the entire world – is eligible to be in that office in the first place, then who does?”

As WND reported, Berg filed suit in U.S. District Court in August, alleging Obama is not a natural-born citizen and is thus ineligible to serve as president of the United States. Berg demanded that Obama provide documentation to the court to verify that the candidate was born in Hawaii, as Obama contends, and not in Kenya, as Berg believes.

At the time of writing this, Obama has not yet been elected, but that is only because the vote has yet to take place. In just a few weeks (on Tuesday November 4, 2008), Obama will become the first half-minority man to be President of the United States of America. The US, and the World, will cheer and it will all happen under much fanfare. We all know of Obama by now. We know he makes great speeches and talks a whole lot about change. But what change does he have in mind? The problem I have noticed is that not many of his supporters seem to understand all the changes he intends to make. Obama often speaks about a world that almost sounds utopian… but how does he intend to build this utopia? How does he intend to pay for this utopia? The devil is often in the details.

The changes Obama implements will have an affect on both the economy (your jobs) and your investments (your retirement). I believe many of the changes he implements will also change American society forever (long after he is gone) by creating a society that believes it deserves a good living by default, instead of a society that works hard to earn a good living. So pay attention to Obamanomics. The most important changes Obama will implement deal with the economy; without a strong economy, Obama will not have the finances in place to afford many of his other social programs.So, I will focus this article on his economic and tax policies which will have an enormous affect on the economy and your investments, as well as the government coffers.

Before I start, remember why the USA became a free nation to begin with… due to the taxes imposed on Americans by the British Throne, which became excessive and caused a revolt.In the last century, the USA became the greatest nation on Earth. It has its share of problems, but it still became #1 on the planet! A commoner could become its wealthiest and most successful with enough hard work, determination and a little bit of luck. This ability to transcend social classes from being poor to being rich, has made America ripe with opportunities. Millions of immigrants, often highly educated and motivated, come from around the world to the USA in order to make a better life for themselves. Many come from 3rd world nations, dictatorships and socialist/communist countries, so they can live in a free market country that affords them many opportunities for a better life.This freedom is precious and critical in creating a healthy environment for economic development and prosperity.

I must ask you a few questions now: If you lived in a country where more than half of your earnings go to the government automatically or you’re jailed, would you consider yourself free?If you lived in a country where you are unable to protect yourself, are you free?If you won the lottery and you’re government automatically took MORE THAN HALF, would you consider yourself free?

Okay, so by now you’re just itching for me to get down to it.I think the American work ethic and creativity helped create one of the finest societies on the planet.I also think Obama will wage a war on the American work ethic and a war on successful people.Please read “The Audacity of Deceit: Barrack Obama’s War on American Values”.It’s funny that many parents want their kids to go to medical school or law school, to get good jobs.Why bother? Under Obama these professionals will suffer and be discouraged with tax rates above 50%!Why go through all the extra effort (and debt for schooling), only to be punished by your hard work and success with punitive taxes that leave you with less than half of what you actually earned?

Below is a great list of ten tax changes Obama wishes to implement, quoted from “The Audacity of Deceit: Barrack Obama’s War on American Values”.Below each change, I have left my comment.

1) Increase the top individual tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.

It could cost the economy billions! This still takes money out of the pockets of successful people and puts it into Obama’s hand so he can spend it, because government doesn’t spend enough money? I think people should be entitled to keep their hard earned dollars and 35% is more than enough for the government to take. Remember, that money would be spent on assets of one type or another (like investments in the economy or houses/boats/consumer goods/etc) and it DOES get circulated back into the economy in an efficient manner by consumers! This is why capitalism has worked so well! The government often waists money in poorly run social programs and money grabs for special interest groups. This will decrease efficiency in the economy and is nothing more than a government transfer of wealth. Let’s create more inefficiencies?!? C’mon… but it gets much worse.

2) Raise the capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 28 percent.

This is an absolutely horrible idea! Capital gains taxes are incurred on investments! Many millions of Americans have a plan to retire. They have put money into investments so the investments could go up in value enough to afford the luxuries of retirement, without depending on social security. Now only 72% of your profits are actually profits. If you needed $1 million to retire, you will now need your investment returns to be even higher to afford retirement! Do we not want people to be successful and self-sufficient? This is impeding the ability of many to be self-sufficient.

Many companies may not invest in the USA as much because of the inherent capital gains. This will also hurt the stock market. We should be encouraging people to save money and invest, not discourage them! I believe a 0% tax rate on capital gains would spur a LOT of investment in the USA, and a lot of jobs!

3) Increase the stock dividends rate from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.

This is just plain dumb! Stock dividends are one of the primary ways retiree’s earn money! If a retiree was able to find investments yielding 10% per year in dividends, than the retiree would only need a portfolio of $250,000 to earn $25,000 in dividends. Of that amount the retiree would get to keep $21,250 after taxes. Under Obama, that same retiree is all of a sudden forced to take a massive pay cut and live off of $15,100! This hurts the stock market, retirees, and the economy in general. This is really stupid. We should encourage people to invest in companies, not discourage them! This is only discouraging investment in America, once again.

4) Raise the percentage of Americans who pay no federal income tax from 40 percent to 50 percent.

Why, in a time with massive deficits, should more burden be placed on fewer Americans? The social programs are not free! Someone must work for, earn, and pay for these social programs. The same low and lower-middle class families that are voting FOR these programs should bear some of costs! If they believe so highly in the programs, they should be willing to put their money where their mouth is and take it on the chin, especially if its such a good idea and helps people out!

5) Impose a 10 percent surtax on all incomes above $250,000 per year.

Surtaxes on success? My, oh my. Shit, I think we should impose a heavy surtax on anyone who earns less than $15,000… pretty quickly I bet you would see a whole lot of people earning more than $15,000 that didn’t use to… that might actually help more people than it hurts! Want an efficient economy? Placing surtax on success is stupid.

6) Raise the death tax rate to 55 percent for any income past the first $1 million exemption.

With many homes being worth over a million (at least by the time many of us die they probably will be if you think about inflation!), a 55% tax rate is almost abusive. Once again, why save money if it’s going to be heavily taxed when you die? This is one of the worst, as it will cause many successful families to move A LOT of assets OFFSHORE to avoid taxes altogether. Why invest in the USA when it looks like it’s going in the wrong direction? Before there was a little bit of stigma attached to rich people moving assets offshore to avoid taxes. Under a heavy taxes (above 50%!) it would only be smart to move all assets offshore, and there might be a stigma for those that don’t! (Why wouldn’t they, do you think they are stupid? If they want to give money to charity, I’m sure many of them worked their entire lives for that money, and would like the ability to choose (democracy!) where there money goes). I assure you, many families will move assets off shore to avoid the wacky Obama taxes altogether.

Many other nations will now try and lure these wealthy families to come to (and invest in) their nations. If America doesn’t appreciate the middle class, middle-upper class, and upper class, I assure you, another nation will!

7) Raise the minimum wage from $6.55 to $9.50.

Inflation anyone? The cost of everything will rise to pay for this increase. It’s almost a zero sum game for the minimum wage earners and it can only hurt the rest of society with inflation. We don’t need this because American workers aren’t competitive enough on the world stage as it is. LOL, So let’s raise the minimum wage even more, so we can’t compete on ANYTHING. Hopefully all businesses and capital (money) will move elsewhere.

8 ) Raise social security payments by 4 percent for individuals, businesses, or anyone who makes $250,000 per year.

Why even comment on this? More social security? If people don’t earn it, they shouldn’t get it. I agree with having social security for those tough times when people lose jobs/get sick, etc. But should we allocate even more money to social security? We should want social security to help put food on the table, but not give each person a life so comfortable they don’t attempt to go out and get a job if they are able to do so! It should be an uncomfortable time when a person is not productive, and the discomfort should be great enough that the person strives to do all he/she can do to become productive to society once again!

9) Increase the top tax rate from 37.9 percent to 54.9 percent for self-employed taxpayers (who already pay ordinary income taxes as well as self-employment taxes).

Why be self-employed or go out and create a business? There’s just no point to risking your money to start a business. Not only are you hit with massive taxes on earnings, but if you do happen to create a business and eventually decide to sell, the capital gains taxes take a large chunk of the value of the business you created. It’s a massive disincentive to create businesses based in the USA. Now how are American businesses supposed to effectively compete with foreign competitors (with wage slaves) when much of the profit is sucked away to government coffers instead of re-invested into the business? Businesses normally either re-invest the profits into the business or give the dividends to shareholders, but with less actual profits… less spending on new technologies, expansion, job creation, etc.

10) Increase the tax rate on Sub-chapter S corporations (small businesses) by up to 15.3 percent (from a top rate of 35 percent to 50.3 percent).

Another tax rate above 50%. Instantly, almost overnight, many corporations will have to reduce any expansion plans they did have, as much of the profit they were going to re-invest is now in the government coffers instead of the corporations bank accounts. All this WHILE there is a credit crunch? C’mon, I thought Obama would want MORE jobs, not less. Why should companies even put a head office in the USA anymore? It doesn’t make sense anymore with disincentives like this.

How can the USA consider itself a free country when it has lost so many of its constitutional rights?Now the right for a person to work hard and enjoy the fruits of his/her labour may disappear under heavy taxes.When more than 50% of your hard earned dollars go to the government, it is NOT a free country!I contend that in a free nation, a government does not take MORE THAN HALF of your earned dollars.

I thought this was interesting: Even Russia is doing a better job at some things than the US. If I didn’t tell you what country it is that is doing the below tax rates, you would never guess:

The tax system in Russia underwent a comprehensive reform in the year 2001. This reform is designed, in principle, to ease the tax burden on individuals and companies and to simplify the classes of payments for national insurance.

Russia has a uniform rate of tax on the income of individuals. As of 2008 tax in Russia is payable at the rate of 13% for an individual on most income. (non-residents 30%). Russian residents pay 9% on dividend income. (Deduction at source). Non-residents pay 15% on dividend income.

If American’s don’t appreciate their successful citizens and the government’s real role in society, there will be consequences. The government has made most of the major problems, including the legislation that ultimately created the housing bubble. Governments can seldom manage their own finances, and yet they want to take MORE of your money out of your hands and “efficiently” transfer the wealth around? It doesn’t work that way, especially when they plan on transferring wealth from productive peoples to unproductive ones… that in and of itself creates inefficiencies.

Here’s what I think will happen. Obama will introduce all his new taxes during a recession. He will make things worse, but will get no blame for it, as most people will blame the previous government for the entire recession. Businesses will get hurt by higher minimum wages (and HIGH inflation!!) which make them even less competitive with other nations around the world, further increasing the need for outsourcing. The businesses that do manage to remain profitable will get slammed by higher taxes, which means less profit to re-invest in the business, the economy, and the owners pockets (shareholder’s often include pension funds, and individual investors retirement accounts!). A lot of baby boomer’s that wanted to retire will no longer be able to do so, due to higher taxes on their investments, income and combined with lower stock prices thanks to both the tax policies and the recession.

Obama will then go on to introduce many of his social programs that will create an entire generation of Americans who expect the government to take care of them. So as government is bringing in less money due to a recession and stupid tax policies, it will begin to spend more. The dollar will suffer. National debt will continue to sky rocket into the stratosphere. America will be less competitive.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will be split. Some nations will follow the lead of the Americans and create very socialist societies, while the other nations that see the errors, will capitalize (pun intended) on America’s mistakes and try and lure the capital, head offices, and assets of American families and corporations. If America doesn’t want the corporations and wealthy families, another nation will. All this will occur, because as many people forget, government did not make the USA powerful and successful, it merely laid the foundation for the PEOPLE to make it successful. Other nations can lay that same foundation and corporations and people will move!

I love America, but I hate the road its going down and can no longer invest my money in America until this socialist agenda is stopped. That’s right. I will NO LONGER invest in America as long as things are headed down such a bumpy road. I hope to one day be able to begin investing in America again, but that won’t happen until America goes back to the constitution and realizes what governments role should be.

Take the Obama Test and see if you agree or disagree with Obama’s policies. He does great speeches on change, and change can be good (or bad)… but change has to be defined!! Right now most American’s badly want change, but I fear they will vote for a change they do not fully understand. At least take a look at the specific changes he will implement before voting, then make an informed decision about whether he is going to implement the changes you want or not.Oh, what’s the use… we already know he won the second he showed his face, regardless of his policies.At least this article might show some of the consequences to his economic policies. Obama is a socialist, bad for business, investments and the middle class.